Sins of the Future
by The Layman
Summary: After Team RWBY put an end to the Breach incident, they thought the worst was behind them. But when they find a mysterious woman in the rubble during a cleanup operation, they find out that recent events were only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. And why does this woman look like an older version of Ruby? Inspired by "Remnant's Reclaimer" by Hysterical Clerical Hijinks. [HIATUS]
1. Prologue

**AN at the bottom.**

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _Yang was walking in the courtyard in front of Beacon Academy, steadily approaching the Hunter statue that stood there. She recognized the place, she'd passed by it on more than one occasion since coming the the school, yet now it seemed different; nothing had_ drastically _changed, everything was still in the same places it had always been, but...something about the scene was just "off", and she could put her finger on it. Maybe the colors were off or something…?_

 _For that matter, how did she even get her in the first place? That last thing she remembered was...was…_

OK, why couldn't she remember how she got here?

 _She would have pondered the conundrum further, only something next to the statue caught her attention._

 _Or more specifically, some_ one _._

" _Who are you?" she asked, taking the appearance of the newcomer in; it was a woman, obviously, around her father's age if she had to guess. She wore a maroon outfit that strongly resembled the nightgown Blake liked to wear, only this one had a black sash similar to her own on the right side of the hem like her own. She also wore a Grimm mask that covered her entire face, much larger than the masks the White Fang tended to use. (Was she somehow connected to the White Fang?...) a long man of black hair trailed out of the back of the mask, though Yang couldn't tell if it actually belonged to the woman or not._

 _However, she didn't have to wonder about that for very long, as the mysterious woman reached up and pulled her mask off, revealing-_

 _She felt her eyes turn red, even though she was sure she hadn't activated her Semblance yet. She didn't even know_ how _she knew that, she just did._

 _Then the woman spoke._

" _Yang, we have a lot to talk about."_

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 **AN: So the story behind this one is that I had an idea for a fic after reading another one and thinking I could do a better job (often how I get my RWBY fic ideas). For me, that means less shipping (outside of what's already been established in canon) and more story. I was originally going to wait until November to get started on it and make it my project for NaNoWriMo; this would give me a chance to work out where the story would go and get the details of the gimmick down and finalized. (Needless to say, it went through several iterations and it still isn't fully nailed down.) It was supposed to to be a placeholder Vol. 3 in lieu of Rooster Teeth actually starting production on it themselves.**

 **Then I was looking of Facebook one and saw that they _were_ starting production of Vol. 3, and that the video game was still going to happen. **

**Needless to say, I squeed.**

 **So now I've got to get as much of the story out before Vol. 3 happens later this year to avoid my mused getting contaminated with new character growth and trivia, and to do so I'm putting all my other stories on hiatus until I get this one finished. Rest assured I will return to them ("Dif'rent Faces" and "What's your favorite Anime?" for RWBY and "Winter Queen" for Bleach currently) upon completion of "Sins" or if I get a sizable portion written. Hopefully I'll get this one finished before the first episode of Vol. 3 gets posted, because I'd rather like to watch the show as it comes out.**

 **Anyway, feedback is appreciated and constructive criticism is welcome. Plot will come before shipping, of course, though I may play around with two specific characters if I can come up with a good enough idea. I will also be posting new chapters as the story is written, though how frequently this will happen I can't say since I'll probably be going back and reediting a lot, so temper your expectations accordingly.**

 **And that's about all for now. Future post script author's notes will most likely be shorter than this one, though that depends on what I end up talking about. (I.E. production troubles, reviews, my personal reasoning, ect.) See you next chapter!**


	2. The morning after

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

The tooting of a badly played bugle blared through the RWBY dorm, startling its occupants awake.

"Rise and shine, everybody!" Ruby trilled, skipping around the room happily with Zwei trotting along behind her, "It's another beautiful day!

"What time is it?" Weiss asked irritably; she'd fallen out of the bed again due to being forcibly jolted awake by her indomitably cheerful team leader, and was rubbing her back where she fell. "And where in all of Remnant did you get a _bugle_? I thought we forbade you from acquiring any new noisemakers."

"Not important!" Ruby countered, tossing the bugle onto her bunk and whipping out a clipboard for all to see, "We've got a lot to accomplish and not very much time to do it in, so- _Blake_ , get up already!"

"It's six in the morning," Blake mumbled, squinted at her Scroll, "classes don't start _this_ early, do they?"

"No, but we're all supposed to help with the cleanup in Vale today," the fifteen year old leader explained, flipping through the papers on the board, "and apparently there's a ton of stuff that needs to get done, so we need to get ready as quickly as possible!"

Weiss grunted as she stretched, "I don't remember volunteering for that."

"Me either," added Blake.

"Oh, that's because I volunteered the whole Team," she said, climbing up to her sister's bunk. She ignored her heiress and Faunus teammates protests in lieu of waking her older sister. Yang was normally a fairly heavy sleeper, but why the bugle call hadn't woken her up with the rest the team was a mystery. "Wake up Yang, we've got stuff to do!" When the blonde brawler didn't respond, Ruby decided that stronger measures were needed and nudged her sister on her shoulder, "Come on Yang, get up already!"

" _Who are_ …" she moaned, still firmly entrenched in dreamland.

"Geez Yang," the young reaper pouted, "what is up?"

"Not her," Blake quipped before being summarily smacked upside the head by Weiss, "Hey!"

"Don't turn into Yang," the heiress admonished.

Ruby sighed, "I didn't want use this yet, but…." She reached into her cape and pulled out a small air horn, holding it above her sister's head.

"And where did you get _that_!?" Weiss shrieked, though her question would remain unanswered when Ruby depressed the top of the horn, releasing the squeaky howl trapped within.

"WAGH!" Yang jolted awake, flailing about for a moment before realizing where she was. "What just?…"

"Would you get up already?" Ruby pleaded, "We have to get to the Bullhead pad by 6:30 if we don't want to miss-"

" _WHAT_?!" the other two shouted.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" gasped Weiss, now rushing to her dresser for a change of clothes, "Even when you get up early you _still_ manage to make us late!"

"No I don't!" she protested.

"You kinda do," Blake reluctantly agreed.

"Wait," Yang said, continuing to shake the sleep from her head, "what's the big rush?"

"Our _esteemed leader_ has apparently volunteered us with the cleanup effort on Vale," Weiss explained with heavy sarcasm, "and neglected to inform the rest of us about it until _just now_!" She quickly grabbed her boots and tugged them onto her feet before realizing they were on backwards.

"So?" the blonde shrugged, turning over and getting comfortable again, "They said classes were canceled today, what's to stop us from just not going?"

"How about the fact that _all of us_ are kind of responsible for the Breach in the first place?" Blake reminded her indolent partner. She was already in her normal combat outfit and now had a sandwich (most likely consisting of tuna) hanging from her mouth. After making sure everything was in place she took the sandwich from her mouth and continued, "And they didn't say classes were canceled, they said that only _some_ normal classes would be postponed, and that anyone they caught cutting would have to didn't detention with Professor Port-"

"WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR!" Yang suddenly exploded, throwing off her covers and leaping of her bunk. She was already in her combat outfit, having not changed out of it the night before, "Come on guys, let's help rebuild a city!"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Blake leaned closer to Yang as they rode on the Bullhead to Vale. "So when did you spontaneously become nocturnal?" she asked in hushed tones. Weiss was currently lecturing Ruby about how they were once again on the verge of being late.

Yang chuckled dismissively, "I said yesterday that I was gonna sleep in, didn't I?"

"True, but that wasn't really 'sleeping in'; I've known bat Faunus that wake up easier than you did."

"Uh, isn't that kinda racist?" Yang wondered.

Blake gave her a look that practically screamed " _really?_ " and pointed to her bow.

"OK, that's fair."

"But that doesn't answer my question," she persisted, "Did you do something last night when we were asleep?"

"That wasn't what you-"

"It's related, and stop dodging the question."

Yang signed. "I'm not dodging, I'm honestly just as stumped as you are." She shrugged, "Maybe I was just more tired than I thought?"

Yang seemed sincere. Since their fateful meeting in the Emerald Forest Blake had gotten to know the blond haired brawler fairly well, and short of Ruby had become something of an expert on the girl's behavior. She could often tell when Yang was about to pull something on Weiss by the nigh imperceptible smirk that wormed its way onto her face, along with other body language reading skills she'd been forced to hone in the White Fang.

That, coupled with the fact that Yang was something of an open book where her emotional state was concerned, made for a rather convincing argument in her favor.

"I think I might have had a weird dream," Yang added, "but I can't remember anything about it, so eh." She leaned forward to get a better view of her sister and her partner, "Think she can keep it up until we get to Vale?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

The plaza where the Breach happened was technically in better shape than before; while there was still rubble everywhere, not to mention the giant hole that lead right to one of the densest populations of Grimm on the continent, it was no longer the bloody aftermath it had been the previous night. Now it looked noticeably (albeit only slightly) cleaner, with many of the larger bits of debris cleared away, and there was a large tent set up for medical aid in an area that managed to escape most of the destruction.

"Wow," Yang whistled, taking in all the relief workers and soldiers scurrying to and fro, "they don't waste any time, do they?"

"Where are all the robots?" Ruby wondered, searching to and fro for any sign of the mechanized infantry. "I want to take a look at them."

"You didn't get a good enough look when we were fighting next to them?" Yang asked.

Ruby shook her head. "I didn't really have a chance to since we were all focused on fighting the Grimm. By the time we finished killing them, the military was already pulling out."

"They must have gone to comb the city for any Grimm that escaped," Blake mused. As they were lead through ground zero her eyes shifted towards the medical tent and she couldn't help but notice all the occupied beds. Many of the occupants has IV dips, though most only had a few bandages or, at most, a cast.

However it was the few patients that were still being fussed over by the staff that really caught her attention. Yes, she knew in the back of her mind that the people of Vale hasn't gotten out of this completely unscathed, but seeing it up close brought it to a whole new light. Seeing the casualties first hand illustrated how much of a Pyrrhic victory they actually accomplished, both in protecting the citizens of Vale and in actually routing the White Fang.

Dear Lord, how many statistics like this had she helped make when she was part of the Fang?

"Blake?" She broke out of her thoughts when she noticed Ruby poking her arm to get her attention.

"Huh?" Blake eloquently responded, "Sorry, I was..." She tried to think of a believable half truth to tell the oft cheerful fifteen year old so she didn't sound needlessly maudlin. "I was just...thinking," she said, deliberately being vague.

"...about what?" Ruby asked hesitantly.

"The past," she explained, equally as enigmatic.

Ruby pressed on, "Does it have anything to do with the people in the tent?"

Blake almost twitched; she forgot how perceptive Ruby was sometimes.

"Yes," she said, not bothering to be coy anymore. "It doesn't matter though; no sense in making things even more depressing than they already are, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Ruby shrugged. "...Oh right! Yang found the food table and asked if you wanted anything."

"She didn't just assume I'd want tuna?" Blake asked, a knowing eyebrow raised.

"Actually, she kinda did…," Ruby said sheepishly, bopping her pointer fingers together. Then her face morphed from embarrassed to astonished, "But then Weiss told her not to be insensitive and ask you! _Weiss!_ "

"Are we talking about _Weiss Schnee_?"

" _I know_! Actually, she put it a different way, but it was kinda rude and I don't think I should repeat it…."

"That's fine, don't bother." Now it was Blake's turn to look sheepish. "The truth is...tuna actually sounds pretty good right now…."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Weiss was trying. Really, she was. In fact, she felt that she'd made great strides as a person since coming to Beacon and becoming a part of Team RWBY; she'd let go of a lot of her selfish pride, her prejudice of the Faunus (which was technically a work in progress, but it still counted!), and especially her resentment at being passed up for Team leader. Hell, she even had a boyfriend...of sorts, in Neptune Vasilias.

However, that didn't mean she wanted to spend her day walking around in what was essentially _garbage_.

Granted, it was mostly just stray bits of rubble and maybe some glass scattered about, and deep down she knew that the preservation of life came first, but habits that had been all but hardwired into you since you could comprehend speech were somewhat hard to break just like that.

Still, she was doing her best not to let it get to her as she searched for whoever was in charge of the operation.

 _If_ I _were in charge of a city wide cleanup effort,_ she wondered, _where would I be directing everything from…_ She didn't get a good look at Ground Zero while on the Bullhead, and a brief look around the site told her nothing. There were soldiers all around the immediate area, but they all looked too engrossed in whatever task they were doing. And as much as the SDC often worked with the military, it was another matter when your only reputation among the members of said military was "Daddy's stuck up princess".

She was _not_ a princess, thank you very much!

However, if she understood Ruby's explanation correctly (grain of salt there) then there were other Huntsmen and even civilians helping the relief efforts, so short of actually running into General Ironwood they were probably her best-

"Oof!" she squeaked. She'd apparently forgotten to watch where she was going while musing and had accidentally bumped into someone else. "I'm sorry," she apologized, peeling herself off the other person's back, "I should have been watching where I was- General Ironwood?!"

"That's correct," the general said, turning around as he rubbed his back, "And who do I have the- Miss Schnee, what are you doing here?"

"Apparently I'm volunteering," she explained, "courtesy of one Ruby Rose." Then she realized something, "Hang on, why are you here; don't you have a military to run?"

"Normally, yes, but in light of recent event this is where my time is best served." It was clearly political double talk, but Weiss decided not to call him out on it. "You'll probably be seeing a lot more of me from now on."

"Oh, and why's that?"

"Because I'll be in charge of security for the Vytal Festival," he said matter of factly, "so something like this doesn't happen a second time…" His face darkened.

Weiss grimaced as well, though for slightly different reasons. She'd always understood that Ozpin would be in charge of the Festival, including the security aspect. Her experience in politics may have been limited due to her only being seventeen, but she knew enough to tell that this wasn't a decision on the Headmaster's part; more likely it was because of some issue the Council of Vale took with him after the Breach incident.

She was both impressed and disturbed by how expediently they responded to this.

"Was there something you wanted?" he asked, once again breaking her from her musings.

"Actually, yes." She took out her Scroll and held it up for the general to see, "You wouldn't happen to have a secure network I could use, do you? I need to get in contact with the Company."

"There's a small terminal in my Bullhead you may use," he said, "but I can only allow you to use it for five minutes, since it's reserved for military usage."

"That should be more than enough time," Weiss said, sticking her Scroll next to Myrtenaster in her sash. She gesture for Ironwood to lead the way, and the general nodded. He lead her to an improvised landing zone where four Bullheads were parked.

"The pilots are probably at the mess table, so privacy shouldn't be an issue," he explained, "but if any of them are still here, just tell them I gave you permission and they shouldn't give you any trouble."

"Thank you again, General." Weiss gave a small curtsey before heading to the craft Ironwood indicated as his.

She saw no sign that the pilots were loitering in the area by the time she reached the craft, and still none when she stepped onboard. She found the terminal easily enough and silently thanked the Almighty Creator for the privacy as she plugged her Scroll into the console. She keyed in the Schnee Dust Company and waited for the network to connect.

A moment later the video screen activated, showing an image of a boyish looking man with dark skin wearing a sleek headset.

 _"Schnee Dust Company, how may I-"_ He said in a pleasant voice, stopping abruptly as a wave of recognition washed over his face. _"Oh, good morning, Miss Schnee! How may I be of assistance?"_

"Good morning…," she reciprocated, slightly taken aback. "Forgive me for sounding rude, but where's the woman I spoke with last time?"

" _I'm...afraid I don't know who you're talk-"_

"Short cropped brown hair, sharp blue eyes?"

" _...no, that doesn't sound like anyone I work with; there's only a few of us cleared to deal with the military directly. Perhaps she works in a different division?"_

"Yes, that must be it…" Weiss mentally kicked herself for not realizing her company would have special people solely for the purpose of dealing with the Military. "Sorry for bothering you then."

" _It was no trouble at all! Did you need anything else?"_

"Nothing that I need done at this moment," she said, removing her Scroll, "Have a pleasant day."

As she exited the Bullhead she was in a decidedly worse mood than when she entered, which was somewhat disconcerting, considering something similar had happened after her visit to the CCT; if this kept up she might have to swear off ever communicating with the Dust Company ever again.

 _I guess I should find where my team got to,_ she reasoned, now having nothing better to do. Of course she'd help with the relief effort as best she could; never let it be said that Weiss Schnee wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty!

Just not _too_ dirty, she had a reputation to keep after all.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"I wonder where Weiss went?" Ruby wondered, lazily picking at a plate of chocolate chip cookies."She's been gone for twenty minutes now."

"I'm sure she's fine," Yang said. She was throwing whatever toppings she could onto a large submarine roll, "she's a big girl. Not like there's any Grimm left hanging around, not to mention all the soldiers everywhere." She jerked her thumb back at a group of three soldiers (two men and a woman) all eating ice cream.

Ruby took another bite of her cookie, looking over ground zero. Despite all the buildings that were still in disrepair things seemed rather peaceful when there wasn't a bunch of Grimm pouring out of a hole in the ground. ...which she was kinda bummed about that, since she was sort of looking forward to knocking down a few stragglers they might have missed the other day.

She was also hoping to see more of those new Atlesian Knight robots, but _apparently_ the people in charge didn't think they were necessary.

Which was _stupid_ , because robots were _always_ necessary! One of her best friends was a robot, even! Robots were like...weapons you could talk to! ...not that Penny was a weapon or anything; she was completely a person, with a soul and feelings and emotions and hiccups and everything!

She wondered how Penny was doing….

"I think I'm going to help in the medical tent," Blake announced, putting her half finished tuna sandwich down, "I'm going to go see if there's anything I can do there."

Yang gestured to Blake's plate with her eyes, her hand being currently preoccupied with holding her own monstrous creation, "You're not gonna finish that?"

"Do you want us to come with you?" Ruby offered.

"I'll be fine," she said, gently shaking her head (and pushing her plate over to Yang, who shrugged and added the half eaten sandwich to her own), "but thanks for offering; you guys should go help clean up all the rubble, you'd be better utilized there than around delicate medical equipment."

"You sure? I'm not really as strong as Yang is…"

"You have a weapon that can slice through pretty much anything," the Faunus rightly pointed out, "I think you'll do fine."

"Yeah!" Yang agreed, her mouth stuffed various meats and cheeses, "What fee faid!"

"And I honestly don't trust you around delicate machinery," she said turning to Yang.

"Yeah, *gulp!*, what she- Hey!"

Ruby snerked despite herself.

"Let's meet back here around lunch time," Blake suggested, getting up from her seat.

"Sounds good to me," Ruby agreed, "Yang?"

"No problems here," the blonde said before taking another gigantic bite of her sandwich, giving a thumbs up.

However, before any of them could leave, they heard what sounded like an explosion off in the distance.

"Vha 'ell waf vhaht!" Yang cried, her exclamation muffled by the food.

"It came from over there!" Ruby pointed towards a column of smoke that just started to rise a block or two away.

"Let's go!" Blake leaped over the table and ran towards the smoke, followed closely by Ruby.

"Wait for me!" Yang called after swallowing, zipping after her sister and her partner.

Her sandwich was left suspended in the air, spinning for a couple seconds before falling back to its plate.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

As the three of them ran to the scene of the accident they met back up with Weiss, who had also noticed the smoke.

"Where were you?" Ruby asked.

"I'll explain later," Weiss said, "More importantly, do any of you now what just happened?"

"Something exploded," explained Yang, "Other than that, no clue- What is it, Blake?"

"I smell something burning," Blake said, wrinkling her nose, " _a lot_ of burning."

"Then let's hurry!" Without waiting for her teammates, Ruby brought out Crescent Rose and opening up, firing a shot behind her and propelling her forward. She shot down the street, hooking her scythe on to a lamppost and firing again in a different direction. She used her Semblance to pour even more speed on, and barely managed to skid to a stop just shy of a group of relief workers in hard hats.

"Rescue team, please respond!" a man shouted into his Scroll, "Rescue team, if you can hear me, _please respond_!" He waited for a moment, then swore under his breath when all he received was static.

He didn't notice Ruby's arrival until she tapped him on the shoulder, causing him to start slightly.

"Go somewhere else," he told her curtly, "kids shouldn't be playing around here."

"I'm from Beacon," she said, getting right to the point, "What happened here?"

"We were inspecting that building when it suddenly started to come down," he replied automatically, "my team had just headed inside when there was a small tremor. Next thing I know the building starts shaking and the billboard on top falls right in front of the door. Communications have been cut off, and we don't have the equipment ready to cut through in time; Monty knows if anyone's still alive in there…" Then he shook his head, as if coming to his senses, "Why am I telling you this? Go away and try not to bother anyone-"

"W-w-wait, I can help!" the young reaper protested. Blake's quip was still fresh in her mind, and given what the man said she was sure she could help. She held out her Baby for the man to see, "Crescent Rose is really sharp, I'm sure she could cut through that sign no problem!" The man regarded her for a moment.

"Fine," he related, "but you follow my orders to the letter or else I'll have you escorted away." Then he turned to the rest of his crew, "Someone set up the scanner, and be quick about it!"

By this point the rest of her team finally ran up, panting.

"Stop doing that!" Weiss scolded, bent over, "It's annoying!"

"Sorry…," Ruby apologized, sheepishly bopping her pointer fingers together. "I got kind of excited…."

Yang put a comforting hand on her sister's shoulder, "It's fine, just tell us what's going on."

As Ruby brought her team up to speed the relief workers hurried to get things ready. They already had a tripod set up, and a pair of them were now hauling a large, cumbersome looking device towards it. Once that was set up one of the workers opened up a panel on top of the device, revealing a screen and a keyboard.

"All set!" the worker said, typing away on the keyboard, "I should have a have a reading in about...got it!"

Team RWBY all crowded around the worker, trying to get a glimpse of the display.

"So what are we looking at?" Weiss asked, trying to squeeze her way past Yang's sizable bust. She pointed to the screen, "I'm guessing none of this is means anything good, right?"

The worker nodded gesturing to the various windows popping open. "These are all warnings that pretty much every major stress point is pushed to the limit," she explained, "the whole building apparently wasn't that stable before the rescue team went in, so anything we do to try and clear a path would end up bringing the whole place down. Unless..." She typed a few more commands and a new image appeared; it was a wire work outline of the fallen billboard with a pair of on top of it, cutting the structure into thirds. "If we could create additional supports with over, then we could make an opening between them." She drew a small arch where she'd indicated, which then dissolved away, "Unfortunately, we were only supposed to be doing recon, so none of us have any Dust to make the ice with..."

Ruby grinned, looking towards her own partner, "Weiss?"

"All full," she said, drawing Myrtenaster and spinning the drum to the appropriate Dust cylinder, "I replaced everything after we got back yesterday."

"Perfect! Blake, you up for a Ladybug maneuver?" The Faunus nodded. "OK! Yang?"

"Yeah Rubes?"

"You open the door." Ruby made a short punching motion to punctuate her command.

Yang pumped her fist, " _Yush!_ Awesome!"

"Um," the worker said, "not to be 'that person', but do you girls actually know what you're doing?"

"You can trust us," Yang assured her, "we're Huntresses in training!" She patted the worker on the back and she and the rest of RWBY headed toward the billboard. They each got into position: Weiss in front, Blake behind her, Ruby next, and Yang bringing up the rear.

Then they sprung into action.

Weiss started things off by forming a pair of blue glyphs approximately where the screen indicated before firing off blasts of ice Dust at them. When they hit, they immediately shot upward, forming pillar that now held the sign in place.

Then she stepped out of the way, allowing Blake to leap forward and slash downward with both parts of Gambol Shroud, causing two parallel wounds. As she did that Ruby jumped off her shoulders and added her own cut across the top of Blake's.

"Go, Yang!"

Grinning maniacally, Yang charged ahead full throttle, her fist pulled back and glowing with Aura. She ran right up to the billboard, drew her arm back as far as she could-

...and lightly flicked the cut out portion, causing it to slowly fall back on the ground.

"Oh yeah, I'm _just_ that good!"

Blake looked back at the relief worker. "Is the building still stable?" she asked.

"As stable as it possibly could be," she answered. "Chief, are you getting anything now?"

The chief, the man Ruby meet before, took out his Scroll again. "Rescue team, please respond."

This time there was a response.

" _-his...ue Team, We...ehind a co...psed wall, can...st it. Tara an...iams both have serious inju...eed immediate medical assis...croll got dam...n't know how-"_

And then it cut off.

The chief swore under his breath, then turned to the other workers, "Don't just stand there, go after them!"

The remaining relief workers quickly hurried into the newly created hole.

"Let me go with them," Blake pleaded to the irritable chief, marching over to him, "it sounded like you men were seriously hurt, and I know triage; I'll be more help in there than out here." The chief was about to question how the dark young woman had heard the transmission (or where exactly she learned to do triage), but dropped it in favor of him just not caring that much in the long run.

He certainly wasn't going to turn down free help, that was for sure.

"Fine, but anything my team says goes, bar none. You got it? "

"Yes sir," Blake nodded. She then hurried through the hole after the relief workers.

"Um, sir?" the woman manning the scanner said squinting at the display, "I'm picking up another life sign."

"Of course you are," he said, "the girl with the bow just ran inside."

"No, I accounted for her," she explained, "this is in addition to everyone else." She motioned for the chief to come over and pointed to a bunch of blinking dots at the bottom of a simple wire frame render of the building. "These seven dots are our people, plus the girl." The image on screen panned down to show a render of the structure's basement, where another dot was blinking, "This one is below the others, and it's a lot more faint. I'm also reading a slight Aura, and I mean it's only _barely_ there at all!"

The chief spoke into his Scroll again, "Team 2, we have another ping one floor below you; do you have a way get down there?"

 _"Negative. All we can see is a hole about 2- maybe two and a half feet wide at most; if that ping's in a bad way, I don't think we can safely move them out-"_

 _"I can make the hole bigger,"_ Blake interjected, _"and Weiss could help lift them up."_

" _But how can she even do that?"_

" _She has a versatile semblance."_

" _If you say so, anything to get us out before this place collapses."_

"Which one of you is Weiss?" he asked, turning to the girls.

"I am," Weiss answered, stepping forward.

"Then go help your friend."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"So who do you think they found in there?" Yang asked after a few minutes.

"I don't know," Ruby shrugged, sitting on a nearby rock. Blake and Weiss hadn't said anything for a few minutes now, and she was getting anxious. She wanted to go in and help, she didn't like just sitting around and waiting (something she picked up from Yang at some point), but she also didn't want to get on the chief's bad side, since he didn't seem to like them very much. "I hope they're OK."

"If they still have Aura left then they should pull through," Yang gave her sister a reassuring pat on the shoulder, almost causing the poor girl to tumble from her perch, "just like your friend from Signal did that one time! What was her name again? ...Sherry something or other…."

"Shelly Teary," Ruby corrected, rubbing her shoulder where Yang patted it.

"Right, her! She pulled through after her injury!"

"She sprained her ankle in a practice match. ...on Parent/Teacher Day."

"But her Aura was in the red when it happened, right?"

Ruby just shook her head; appreciative of Yang's attempts to lift her spirits, but disappointed in her execution of said attempt.

Just then, they heard a commotion from inside the building, and a moment later the relief workers and Weiss came pouring out of the hole, dragging their comrades as fast and as carefully as they could.

"Weiss?" Ruby asked as the heiress ran up to her and Yang, sliding off her rock, "What's going on?"

"Yeah, what's going on?" Yang added, "You guys just shot out of there like Nora when she smells pancakes."

"The woman- the...extra person they found," she stammered, trying to collect herself, "s-she just up and attacked us! Blake distracted her so we could get the others out, but-"

Yang didn't wait for Weiss to finish, she just took off right into the building, intent on helping her Faunus partner with this apparently perfectly fine injured person.

This lasted all of five seconds before Yang came flying back out, smashing into the rock Ruby was just sitting on.

Blake followed immediately in the same fashion, crashing into Yang.

"OK," Yang grunted, pushing Blake off her, "wasn't expecting that…"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _So I'm just going to lay this out in the open now, I'm probably going to tread the same ground that Remnant's Reclaimer does a couple of time, though I'll do my best to put my own spin on them when they happen, this first proper chapter being a good example. (Granted, the fact that my story has a prologue already separates it from HCH's opus...) Without giving too much away to those who haven't read it yet, the story starts in the future and focuses on the "main character" in the first chapter, and then transitions to some time shortly after the end of Volume 1, whereas mine starts shortly (read: immediately) after Volumes 2 ends, and introduces Team RWBY in reverse order, and only at the end of the chapter do I even hint at what I describe in the summary, and I plan on showing the "future" later on._

 _Of course you probably already know that, having already read the chapter. (In which case I'm being needlessly repetitious.)_

 _Also without spoiling anything, I already have a general idea what I'm going to do for Future Ruby's appearance. I'm not really the best at describing clothing in any kind of great detail, but I'll do my best._

 _Until next time!_


	3. The morning after pt2

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

She was hallucinating, that had to be it; that bastard's weird machine must have done something to her, there was no other explanation she could think of for why she was suddenly seeing ghosts from the past.

She had enough of that shit in her own mind, she didn't need it being made manifest and tangible.

And _of course_ her sister and Blake were a part of these visions, why wouldn't they be? It wasn't like they weren't in the back of her mind already every waking hour, taunting her off her failure with their mere presence.

She _really_ wished she had a strong drink in her hand right about now...

Now that the spectres were gone (how she'd managed to send them flying she couldn't begin to image, but they were gone now and that's all that mastered) and since no more were appearing, at least for the moment, she could finally take some time to stop and reorient herself.

For starters, she took a moment to look around the building she now found herself in. (Whether it was just a product of her addled perception or another side effect of that weird machine would come with later analysis.) It looked like an old clothing boutique, judging by the toppled racks of clothes everywhere. They were pretty trendy clothes too, like something Coco would have with to go clubbing beach when clubs were still a thing.

Still, there was something of about the whole thing, and she couldn't put her finger on it for the life of her. However, after a minute of intense scrutiny she had her answer; they were all still brand new clothes. They weren't faded with age, and apart from the odd rip or tear caused by the state of her location a majority of the wears looked like they just needed a little dusting off before they could be worn again immediately.

...yep, this was _definitely_ a hallucination.

She didn't know how long she'd been standing the in ruins of what was probably a store that Coco frequented, albeit a clearly fictitious one, when she heard the sound of a dozen clanking metal boots stomping just outside the building, a sound she only knew all too well.

Fortunately, she also knew how to deal with it.

Just like clockwork ( _...dammit! Stupid Yang..._ ) a half dozen metal, humanoid figures came through the door that Phantom Yang did, all gleaming and new and... _old_. These were the _old_ models from over a decade ago. In fact, she remembered seeing these back when she was still at Beacon; why the hell would her mind conjure up killbots that had long since been rendered obsolete?

Whenever she came down from this stupid waking dream she was going to punch that insane doctor _so hard_!...

"Citizen, do not be afraid," one of the robots said, holding its hand out invitingly. "This location will not remain safe for much longer, please follow us if you wish to remain unharmed."

She wasn't fooled for a moment.

Faster than the machines' photoreceptors could process what happened, she'd reached behind her back and pulled out Crescent Rose, shifting it into its scythe form and sliced the proffered, mechanical hand clean off, followed by a slash from head to toe, perfectly bifurcating the device of evil perfectly in half.

Not allowing the damn machines a chance to react, she planted the point of her weapon in the ground and fired off rounds into the other killbots, making them explode with each hit. One of the explosions actually managed to damage a second bot in addition to the one she initially hit, blowing it back into a wall, but she planted another one in it for good measure; you could never be too careful with these death dealing machines, even if they were older models.

With these taken care of, she had to get away as soon as possible. This location was obviously compromised, and more killbots would be arriving any minute to try and finish what the others started. She had no idea what the rest of her dreamscape was like, or even if there was even a safe place to run to in the first place, but any place was better than here, and if it turned out that there was nothing but death machines crawling around everywhere then she wanted to fight them on her terms.

She kept Crescent Rose out in case there were more killbots waiting outside and sprinted out into whatever was outside the building.

...and she was in downtown Vale, looking almost pristine compared to how it normally was.

OK, something was really starting to bug her now; the brand new clothes, the older model killbots, and now a city that _didn't_ look like it was playing Weiss on their first day at Beacon?

"This isn't a dream," she murmured, hardly believing the word she just spoke; it was like she had the answer that would make everything clear right on the tip of he tongue, but she couldn't get the words out.

 _"Hey, bitch!"_

She skidded to a stop, slowly turning around to look at the speaker.

And because the universe hated her, it was Phantom Yang again.

Swell.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Hey, bitch!" Yang called when she saw who laid her out in no seconds flat run out after the Atlas robots went in to try and subdue her, pointing at her directly, "We're not done yet!" She dropped into her typical boxing stance and motioned for the woman to "come at her".

The woman took the bait, charging right for the blonde brawler and bringing her weapon to bear.

Yang responded in kind.

"Everybody stay back!" Blake warned the relief workers, "We'll handle this."

"Be my guest!" the chief said, more than happy to let the young Huntresses deal with the obviously dangerous woman who just came out of the building; dammit, he was a rescue aid worker, not a fighter! He then went about making sure everyone got to a safe distance away from the fight.

Meanwhile, Ruby and Weiss stayed back from the fight enough not to get caught up in the brawl, though they still remained alert in case that happened anyway. Both girls could tell the woman was ridiculously powerful, since not many people could lay Yang out so quickly, and wanted to see just how skilled she was first hand.

"Hey Ruby?" Weiss whispered to her partner as they hid behind the rock Ruby sat on ("It's a legitimate strategy!"), "Am I going crazy or is that woman using your weapon?"

Ruby's hand immediately went to where Cress was attached to her belt. Assured that her baby hadn't somehow gotten lost, she shook her head in answer.

Weiss turned back to the fight and scrutinized the woman's weapon again. Upon a second glance she noticed a few key differences from the normal Crescent Rose, the most notable one being the blade; where the cutting edge of Ruby's blade was smooth but razor sharp, this one was serrated with little teeth that were angled back. The color scheme was different too, as black seemed to be the primary color as opposed to red, and the rifle function didn't seem to be slide action anymore.

There were many other little things she noticed (Ruby had gone on ad nauseum about her "baby" one day...), but essentially he final conclusion was that she wouldn't want to be facing the business end of that wicked looking Rose if she could help it.

She wondered if that made Yang braver or stupider than her for doing so now?

...her money was in the later.

Regardless, she kept attention on the fight (Yang was on the defensive, surrendering too much time dodging and not enough punching.), shifting her focus to the woman herself. At first glance she looked like a palette swapped version of Yang, what with the fact that both of them worse short shorts and midriff exposing tank tops, but she dismissed it almost immediately as being too fanciful.

 _That's preposterous,_ she scolded herself, _there's not enough evidence to assume that._

Shaking all speculation away, Weiss began mentally noting specifics; the woman wore combat boots (probably military issue, if she has to guess) and a shoulder harness with two pistols in it, so Weiss could reasonably conclude that the woman was most likely in the military for some time. Her light clothing was ideal for hotter climates, so she either served in that particular military or just spent time there. What stood out the most about this woman's attire was the hood she wore. Not a hooded cape like Ruby did, (though it was the same shade of red as her partner wore), just the hood itself. It was pulled down so most of the woman's face was covered in shadow, preventing Weiss from getting a good look at her. Her mind immediately concluded that, with all the other facts she'd gathered, this woman was part of some sort of special forces unit, probably (and most likely) gone rogue.

"She's scared," Blake noted, suddenly appearing behind Weiss and Ruby.

"What the-!" Weiss started, jumping slightly when she noticed her teammate. (Ruby squeaked.) "Don't _do_ that, Belladonna! ...and what do you mean, 'she's scared'?"

"She seems fine to me," Ruby said, wincing as she watched her sister dodge a slash from the woman that would have given her a bob cut if it connected. "That's _probably_ a bad thing…."

"She's trying to attack Yang for everything she's worth," the Faunus explained as the woman shifted her weapon into a sniper rifle (disturbingly like Crescent Rose) and rapidly firing at Yang, who managed to deflect the rounds with Ember Celica, "The only time people do that are when they have nothing to lose or everything to lose."

"And you know this...how?" Weiss asked.

Blake shrugged, "I read it in the ' _UNSC Chronicles_ ' series, it's as good an explanation for why she's fighting as hard as she is as any. That, and I saw it happen sometimes when I was part of the White Fang."

Weiss said nothing, letting her friend's point stand.

"Do you think we should go help?" Ruby petitioned as the woman grabbed Yang and kneed her in the stomach, tossing her at one of the ice pillars Weiss made earlier.

"Be my guest." Blake put her hands up in surrender. "She knocked me through a wall before, it's you guys' turn now."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Yang was kinda having a bad day.

It had started or OK enough, weird dream she couldn't remember aside, but these last five minutes had thrown an enormous wrench into all that.

Now, it wasn't often that Yang lost a fight, much less was outmatched by her opponents. Yesterday was a good example of the exception to that rule, when she was fighting that midget with the parasol. After all the chaos of that day has died down and she'd had time to think she realized that she'd let Short Stuff get under her skin, and therefore have total control for the entire fight. (Yang still didn't know why she'd run off like she did, but gift horses and all that.) However, the difference between Short Stiff and the woman she was fighting _now_ was that Short Stuff was merely toying with her before she scarpered off.

 _This_ bitch had _absolutely no intention_ of letting her walk away, and it was _abundantly clear_ that she wasn't toying with her.

Also, Yang was under the impression that the woman currently about to kill her was seriously injured due to the fact that she apparently had little to no Aura, so she was trying to hold herself back on the hopes that the woman would tire herself out.

Yeah, that wasn't happening.

Keep in mind, this was all technically happening before breakfast.

"You know," Yang said to no one in particular, picking herself up out of the small crater she'd created upon impact, "I was actually trying to be nice, because I'm just awesome like that." Finally free of her makeshift timeout chair, Yang let her Semblance flare, her eyes turning red and her hair starting to glow. "Now, the kid gloves come off."

The hooded woman stood her ground, switching her stance and holding her weapon parallel to the ground.

"You brought this on yourself," the brawler declared, building up to a run.

The two were about to collide when suddenly Ruby zipped in between the two warring women, a trail of rose petals falling to the ground behind her. Yang skidded to a stop before she accidentally punched her little sister into oblivion.

"Stop fighting!" she pleaded, throwing her hands out and turning to face her sister's aggressor, "Look, I don't know what Yang did to make you so angry at her but whatever it was she didn't mean it!"

"Didn't even do anything…," the blonde brawler mumbled, pouting slightly.

"And I know she can be insensitive sometimes, and impulsive, and stubborn, and rude, and-"

" _Not helping!"_ Yang ground out under her breath. (Secretly, she was glad Ruby stepped in when she did, she was getting her _ass_ kicked, but she didn't need to be so mean about it!)

"-And she spends too much time brushing her hair-"

" _Thank you!"_ Weiss praised from her hiding spot.

"-but she's really a good person, so please just stop trying to kill her and let her apologize, OK?"

Yang was about to protest once again that she didn't do anything when she heard what was quite possibly the absolute last thing she expected to hear at this moment.

"Hey, Rubes?" Yang whispered, leaning in close to Ruby's ear, "Is she...crying?"

"I think so," the crimsonette nodded mutely, lowering her arms. The hooded woman was now leaning on her weapon for support, the full edge of the blade resting on the ground, and she was reaching under her hood with her free hand, most likely wiping away tears. What sounded like tiny hiccups could be heard emanating from under her red hood.

"He did it," the woman sobbed, her voice a mixture of amazement and relief, "the crazy bastard actually did it; _the teleporter sent me back in time!_ "

"Ex...cuse you?" Ruby said, question marks flashing over her and Yang's heads.

"Wanna run that one by us again, crazy lady? " Yang asked.

Without warning, the woman rushed forward and scooped her up in a desperate embrace. "You have _no idea_ how happy I am to see you again!"

" _Yeah, that's nice and all, but do I know you_?" Yang grunted, staining to survive being in the receiving of one of her patented bone crushing hugs, " _Also! Ribs! Crushing!..._ "

"Sorry!" The woman quickly released her hold on Yang, letting heart be able to breathe again.

 _So_ that's _what it feels like...,_ Yang realized, doubled over and gingerly holding her sore ribs.

"Sorry about that," she apologized again, "but it's just...overwhelming, seeing you here in front of me again. I mean, I was right there when you-" She cut herself off and cleared her throat, "But before I tell you who I am..." She turned to the rock Blake and Weiss were still hiding behind, "You two can come out now, I promise I won't attack you guys anymore."

The heiress and the Faunus gingerly crept out from Mr. Rock, still wary of the woman who, just two minutes ago, seemed hell bent on their destruction. They looked to their other teammates for confirmation of the woman's sincerity, but all they got were confused shrugs.

Thought the fact that she was throwing down all her weapons (the pistols and a plethora of knives that none of the girls had seen before) was a small point in her favor.

"OK we're all here," Yang said once the other two made their way over, tapping her foot impatiently, "now explain how you know who I am." She squinted, trying to see past the hood's shadow. "...you're not my mother, are you?"

"No," the woman said, a slight chuckle in her voice, "I think seeing _her_ right now would be less shocking. And I know who _all_ of you are." With that, she reached up and pulled her his back, finally revealing her face.

The first thing all the girls noticed was large eye patch the woman had over her left eye. Aside from that and a few age lines she actually had a rather youthful face; she could easily pass for someone in their early twenties if she wanted to. She also had an uneven scar over her right eye that looked eerily similar to Weiss's. Her russet hair was long enough that if tickled her shoulders, and was vibrant crimson at the tips. Accounting for error, she was almost the spitting image of-

"...Mom?" a thoroughly shocked Ruby gasped, her eyes beginning to water.

"Close, but not quite," the woman admonished, giving an all too familiar smirk that managed to erase any lingering doubt as to her identity. She looked straight at Ruby, "I'm you, from the future."

"Fuck me...!" Yang breathed, giving her sister a slightly too hard pat on the back, "...you got _hot_!"

Blake, for her part, was only having a _slightly_ harder time coping with this revelation. Her avid reading had exposed her to many different concepts, both theoretical and practical, so her brain wasn't sputtering to make sense of things like Ruby's was. (The poor girl had thin wisps of smoke coming from her ears.) Still... time travel? Was such a thing even possible? Apparently so, if the woman who looked suspiciously like an older version of their young team leader was to be believed. This raised a slew of other questions: why was this woman here? Was there a way for her to get back where she came from? If so, could she come and go freely if she wanted? Would _others_ show up at some point? Would she meet a future version of herself? Would her future self know the ending to Ninjas of Love, and would she tell her younger self if she did? So many things to think about...

Weiss, on the other hand, seemed to have turned to stone, pointing dumbly ahead with her mouth hanging slack, her eyes the size of Pyrrha's shield.

"...Weiss, you OK?" Blake asked upon noticing the state of the heiress. She waved her hand in front of the statuesque (literally) heiress's eyes. When this produced no results (save for helping to dry out Weiss's eyes slightly faster) Blake experimentally poked her in the shoulder, gently of course.

This caused Weiss to fall straight back onto the ground with no indication that her body had in any way moved from the position it was currently frozen in.

"Ah damn," Future Ruby sighed, "I had a feeling something like this would happen..." She then knelt down and started retrieving all her weapons.

"You had a feeling that Weiss would freeze up like this when she learned that you're my sister from the future?" Yang questioned, her eyebrow raised.

"Pretty much," she nodded, slotting four of the knives back into her boots, two each. "Remember when we all found out we be going shadowing Dr. Oobleck of that mission to Mountain Glen?"

Ruby, Yang and Blake all sweatdropped, remembering the incident in all its visceral, gory detail.

"That was just the other day," Blake pointed out, again the first one of the group to words.

"Really? Huh, feels like it was ages ago for me." She finished hiding her knives and grabbed pistols, "The point is she doesn't handle surprises well." Then she walked over to where she left her weapon and picked that up, folding it up and hooking it onto her belt. "We should probably get her some medical attention. Just saying."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Yang ended up carrying Weiss back to the medical tent, stating "Because I'm never gonna get another chance to, that's why!" when asked why she so readily volunteered for the task. She made the journey with a spring in her step and a grin plastered on her face, drinking in all the weird looks she was getting during the trip.

"I have no words," deadpanned Blake, walking directly behind her partner.

"I'm not gonna lie, this is pretty hilarious!" Future Ruby said, unsuccessfully trying to hide her mirth.

"Weiss isn't going to be happy when she wakes up," Ruby pointed out.

"Yeah," her sister agreed, "but only if she finds out what happens when she wakes up." She shifted the petrified heiress to her other shoulder, "Personally, I think it would be funnier if she _didn't_ find and just kept wondering why everyone was looking at her strange!"

"Yang's that's mean!" Ruby scolded. Then she turned toward her future self, "And it's not _that_ funny! Aren't you supposed to be me?"

"Firstly," Future Ruby countered, "the way you said it makes it sound like you still found it at least a _little_ funny." Ruby blushed at this. "Second- and I just realize this ties into my first point -I find it funny because I'm you and the future kinda sucks."

Blake's ears perked up at this. "How so?" she asked.

"In many, many sucky ways," Future Ruby explained. "Maybe I'll explain later, when Weiss has come to terms with things, but right now I'm still feeling a little woozy from the trip here. ... _stupid anticipated side effects…!_ " When she saw the trio of raised eyebrows she explained further, "The guy who made the time machine said that I'd probably feel disoriented coming out the other side. Actually, he used a lot more big words that even Blake would have trouble understanding, but I'm pretty sure that was the gist."

"So that's why you were attacking us before," Yang wondered, "because you couldn't get your timey-wimey bearings?"

Future Ruby shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine; as far as I know, I'm the first person to ever travel through time; everything I was told before I came here was just speculation and theory, I'm not even sure there's a way for me get back if I wanted to."

The mood became decidedly more somber after that, living statue Weiss be damned.

"...do you want to go back?" Ruby asked hesitantly.

"No," her future self said without hesitation, shaking her head. "Like I said, the future sucks; if I ever see that hellhole Remnant becomes it'll be too soon! Although…," she sighed longingly, "there are _some_ things I'll miss, I'm not gonna lie. Mostly people: Weiss, Jaune, Dr. Oobleck, Dad, Drei…"

"Who?" Ruby and Yang asked simultaneously.

"Our dog. ...sad to say, Zwei got sick and passed away, so Dad and I got another-"

"Ack!" Ruby exclaimed, stopping abruptly, "I _knew_ I was forgetting something!"

"What is it, Rubes?" Yang asked, setting Weiss down for a moment.

"I forgot Zwei back in our room!" she wailed, "I was gonna bring him because I thought he could help sniff out people to rescue or something..."

"YOU DID _WHAT_!?" Weiss shrieked, apparently having found the strength to articulate upon hearing the name of the little ball of adorable fluffiness, "You just left that poor, helpless little darling alone in our room when he could have been here being cuddled? What kind of inhuman monster are you?"

"Not really the point...," she muttered, reflexively shrinking back under the tirade her heiress partner was spitting.

"It's not like he'll die from be alone for an hour or two," Yang pointed out, not that Weiss was paying any attention to her.

"I'm kind of glad he's not here," commented Blake, "there's something not right about him..."

"Hey! Don't talk smack about my dog, Belladonna; I'm perfectly fine with hitting girls, don't think I won't!"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Future Ruby stood back a little ways from the group, content to just watch as her past self and her friends bickered amongst themselves. It was strangely comforting in a way that few things managed nowadays. Her mind recalled the days of her youth, before the world went to shit, how she and her team would often get into such petty arguments that seemed so important at the time but ended up mastering didly squat later on. These were now some of her most cherished memories, because they were of _all of them_ together; no country torn asunder by war, no fighting for your very survival every single day, no pang of remembering all the friends you lost, just the four of them making the most of the time they had together and having fun doing it.

It was...oddly surreal watching herself outside of her body...

Her thoughts turned to Zwei and how much she missed him. Drei might have been a loyal companion to her and Dad, not to mention a much needed comfort from time to time, there was just no comparing him to a dog who was, for all intents and purposes, _literally indestructible_.

She wondered if he would even recognize her. After all, she was essentially a completely different person from her young counterpart, and dogs identified each other through smell rather than sight. Maybe it wouldn't matter, maybe the mass of chemicals that made up "her" was just so unique that time wouldn't be a factor. Or maybe she was completely wrong and the one of a kind wonder dog would start at her blankly as if to say "OK...and?".

"Well, nothing ventured...," she muttered to herself before loudly clearing her throat. "Hey," she said once the girls' attention was focused on her, "how about instead of arguing about it, we just go back to the room and check on him? I kinda haven't seen the little guy in years."

"I _suppose_ we could do that," Ruby hesitantly agreed, "...but we _were_ supposed to be helping here-"

"I vote we go back!" Yang said quickly, her hand shooting into the air, "I never actually volunteered for this gig."

"I believe our time would be better spent preparing for the tournament at the Vytal Festival," Weiss chimed in. "Not that I think that this relief effort is pointless, but aren't exactly trained for this kind of thing; we'd be more of a hindrance than a help."

Yang glanced over to her quiet, Faunus teammate, "Et tu, Blake?"

"I'd actually rather stay here," she said, thinking once again of all the bodies in the medical tent.

"Looks like you have a tie," Future Ruby mused. "...but not for long, because I vote we go back."

" _Yes!_ " Yang cheered, pumping her first in the air.

"N-n-n-no fair," Ruby sputtered, "your vote doesn't count; you only got here twenty minutes ago! A-and I'm still Team Leader, so I say we're stay!"

Future Ruby grinned an evil grin that would have caused Glynda to at least blink.

"True," she conceded, "but I'm you, so I've been Team Leader just as long as you have, and then some. This also make me the most senior member of Team RWBY, and _I_ say we're going back to the room, so there!" She stuck her tongue out for good measure.

Ruby slumped to the ground, rivers of defeated tears pouring from her eyes.

"Think of it this way," she continued, pointing to each girl in turn, "I can help Weiss get in the practice she wants, I can provide an alibi for Yang not to stay here any longer, I'm pretty sure I can teach Blake whatever she wanted to learn by staying here, and as a bonus..." She knelt next to Ruby and gently lifted her chin up, "I can show you how to do all those modifications to Crescent Rose you've been meaning to try."

Ruby perked up immediately, leaping into the air and letting out a great, whopping "YAHOO!" before hedging straight for the Bullheads, a tail off Rose petals fleeting in her wake.

Her inner weapons geek was starting to show.

"Geez, was I really that gung-ho about weapons at that age?"

"You technically still are," Weiss reminded her glibly while counting down on her fingers. "Four...three...two...one."

Ruby zipped back over, bopping her fingers together sheepishly.

"Um…let's go, Team?" she cheered weakly.

"You're such a dunce…," the heiress sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Ignoring the bad comedy routine, Blake turned to Future Ruby and asked, "How are you going explain why you're suddenly here?"

"...I don't follow," she said, tiny question marks floating over her head.

"Well, aside from the fact that you're from some point in the future and technically don't exist yet, you also attacked a bunch of rescue workers for no apparent reason and destroyed the military robots they sent it to help them; there's a good chance all the soldiers around here will take offense to that."

"Oh yeah," Yang remembered, "she did kinda do that…"

"Well, I have this." Future Ruby reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out a Scroll that looked like it had seen better days; it had chipped paint and a slightly cracked screen, and when she turned it on the image buzzed and flickered erratically. After a few frustrated attempts she finally got a badge of some kind to appear and held it up for Blake to see. "In my time I'm a Sergeant, so I shouldn't have any trouble bullying my way past the grunts. If worst comes to worst, I'll just make up something on the spot."

"Are you sure that's alright?" Ruby asked, skeptical.

Future Ruby just shrugged. "Dunno. I just did something that by all rights should be impossible, I don't think rules really matter to me anymore."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _To address a review I receiver for the last chapter, yeah, there's probably a lot of stuff that could be touched up, but right now I'm trying to get as much story out as I can. However, I'm completely open to having a beta reader for this project, so send me a PM (don't use a Review) if you're interested in the position._

 _Anyway, with that out of the way, a new challenger has appeared! Future Ruby is here, and I think her look came out rather well. I'd love to hear what you guys think. (For those familiar with Remnant's Reclaimer, I have something planned for much later in the story with Future Ruby's eyepatch; it's not just a cheap rip off of HCH's version, I promise.) You probably won't see Future Ruby change outfits very much, though maybe the plot will dictate a few minor contextual modifications, we'll all have to wait and see._

 _So let's talk about Zwei for a moment! In my mind he has a history that, for anyone familiar with Cowboy Bebop (and really,_ everyone _should be familiar with that show), is pretty much the same backstory Ein has, only with a Remnant twist; he was the product of experiments in some secret laboratory, but managed to escape and wander around Remnant for a little bit before eventually being found by Taiyang, and the rest is history. ...now that I think about it, I'm probably going to do a fic about that after I'm done with this one, I_ really _like this idea!_

Well, that's all for now. See you next chapter!


	4. Once more back to Beacon

_A/N at the bottom._

 _Theme song for the chapter: "Round One" by Jeff Williams feat. Lamar Hall._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

True to her word Future Ruby flashed her scroll to one of the soldiers and told him she needed one of the Bullheads to take her and Team RWBY back to Beacon Academy. He complied easily and didn't ask any questions.

"See?" she said, settling down in on the floor of the airship, "Nothing to it!"

"Most impressive," Blake nodded.

"The look on his face was priceless!" Yang chuckled, "I think that might have just made my morning!"

"I try…" She took a flask from her belt and unscrewed the cap, tilting it back and letting its contents flow down her throat. "Ah!..." she sighed contentedly, "That's good stuff!"

"Um," Ruby said, holding up her finger like a toddler, "can I ask you something?"

"I suppose. I mean, bet you're just _burning_ with questions about what's going to happen to you, like 'do I ever get a boyfriend?' or 'how does Ninjas of Love end?'"

Blake turned away, blushing furiously.

"Actually," the crimsonette said, "I was wondering if you could tell us about the future? I mean, you keep saying how bad it is, but I just thought…"

"Yeah, I know; future self, remember?" She sighed, taking another long swig of whatever was in her flask. "I guess I could tell you a little bit. It's not gonna be very pretty, just keep that in mind." Ruby nodded, and her elder self leaned back against the bulkhead.

"To start, Vytal is pretty much ruined. The entire continent has been devastated almost to the point of being unlivable, and the few areas that aren't are close to overcrowded. Everyone barely survives on food rations and what little we're able to cultivate. People live in constant fear of being attacked, and going a full day without seeing a pack of Grimm walking past the hovel you managed to hide in is the exception to the rule."

"So Humanity fell to the Grimm?" Weiss wondered, "That seems...disheartening."

"Actually, it wasn't the Grimm," Future Ruby explained, "When Humanity fell, it was to our own arrogance, our own hubris, our- fuck metaphors, it was robots, OK?"

Team RWBY gasped; none of them were expecting to hear _that_ of all things!

"...how?" Ruby asked, worry quivering in her voice. She imagined Penny standing over her with glowing reds eyes and a wicked looking smile, her arms morphed into impossibly huge guns that were pointed directly at her forehead…

"Nobody really knows," Future Ruby said listlessly, "and it went on for so long that nobody really cares how it started, they just know it happen. The sad thing is that in hindsight it seems as plain as day; our preoccupation with the White Fang, Ironwood's insistence on replacing flesh and blood soldiers with mechanical ones, Penny being revealed to the world-"

"You mean that weird girl who came for the Vytal Festival?" Yang snapped her fingers, the name clicking in her mind, "What's she got to do with anything?"

What Yang didn't see was that, while she was focused on Future Ruby, her little sister was making supremely unsubtle hand gestures to her older counterpart to "zip it".

"She's a robot too," the elder Rose said, needless of her junior's warnings.

Ruby's hand then formed an irresistible attraction to her forehead.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"That...makes sense," Blake noted, "It sounds like the plot of a bad science fiction novella, but it would explain some things about Penny's behavior."

"Wasn't this the plot of an Arnold Schwarzenheimer movie?" Yang wondered.

"Why did you tell them?!" Ruby protested, "I promised Penny I'd keep that a secret!"

"They were gonna find out eventually," Future Ruby dismissed, "during the Tournament. The point is that some people still think that she had something to do with the shit that ruined the world, but since she disappeared shortly after her 'coming out', I guess you could call it, nothing has ever been able to be conclusively confirmed." Another swig. "Personally, I don't think it was her fault, at least not directly."

"So is that why you're here," Ruby wondered, "to stop whatever happened that caused the future to go all wonky?"

"Something like that," she said, hooking her flask back to her belt, "If you don't mind, I just wanna close my eye for a bit until we reach Beacon." She then folded her arms behind her head and closed her good eye, her breathing becoming soft and even.

The rest of the trip went by in silence as the girls pondered what their leader from the future had told them.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"ZWEI!" Future Ruby squeed, scooping the dark furred Corgi up and cuddling him, nuzzling him with her cheek, "You have no idea how happy I am to see you, you stupid, beautiful dog!" After sniffing the strangely familiar smelling woman holding him he confirmed that she was OK and proceeded to lick her face in response.

"I guess she really is Ruby from the future," Yang remarked as Future Ruby did nosies with Zwei. "I guess Zwei just _'nose'_ she's the- ow!" she exclaimed as Future Ruby's flask beaned her right between the eyes.

"Shut up," she said without looking away from the dog, scratching him behind his ears, "don't ruin this for me."

Weiss cracked up at this, holding her stomach when she developed a stitch.

"That may be the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life!" she said between breaths, "Someone finally did something about your stupid puns, and it was your own sister!"

Yang pouted, rubbing the spot where she's been hit. "Yeah well yours are worse..."

"I still don't know why you people like that dog so much," said Blake from the safety of her bunk. It was clear she was in the minority when it came to Yang and Ruby's beloved pet, but she didn't care; there was just something about it that sent feelings of primal disgust tingling all through her body whenever... _it_ was around, she couldn't right explain it.

"You know," Weiss told the frightened feline Faunus, jerking her thumb back at her "esteemed leader", "the only reason I'm not giving you a piece of my mind on the subject of our little _angel_ is that I'm still mad at Ruby for being a neglectful owner."

"I said I was sorry, _princess_ , what do you want from me?"

" _It's HEIRESS_ , and what I want is-"

" _Be quiet_ ," Future Ruby growled, glaring at both Weiss and her younger self in turn, " _I'm playing with my dog._ "

"Yes ma'am!" the two girls squeaked, hugging each other in fright.

"So, um...," Yang ventured in an attempt to lighten the mood, "what do we do now?" She didn't really have any ideas herself, but anything was better than sitting around, doing nothing. "Hey, Ruby?"

"Yes?" they both answered, one in fright and the other nonchalant.

"…yeah, that's not gonna get old fast. OK, we need something to call you so we can tell both of you apart."

"Ooh, you're right." Future Ruby tapped her chin, setting Zwei down on her lap as she thought of an alias for herself. "...I got nothing," she said after a moment, "feel free to suggest stuff."

"How about 'Essmyrren Mullen'?" Blake suggested.

Future Ruby shook her head, "Nah, sounds like something out of Wizards of Romance."

Once again, blood rushed to Blake's face, which she attempted hide by burrowing under her covers.

Yang snapped her fingers, "What about 'Revy'? That sounds pretty badass."

"Getting closer, but…"

"You're all thinking too small!" Weiss griped. "A name should be something grand! Elegant! Something like...Elisabet Rinwald Wingates Fairbody Shcnee-"

"Too long," Future Ruby ("Hey!") interrupted before Weiss could go on. "How about we just stick to a first and last name, OK?"

"Satin Crimsonetta!" Ruby blurted out. When she received nothing but blank stares, she resorted to bopping her fingers together. "No good?"

"It sounds familiar," Blake mused from her makeshift nest, "I think we should probably avoid names like that."

"Actually…," the elder Ruby said, a grin slowly creeping onto her face, "I think Younger Me might be on to something here." She spread her arms across the air, "How about _Crimson Thorne_?"

"It sounds awfully close to 'Ruby Rose'," Weiss pointed out, "If we're really going by Blake's suggestion to avoid similar names, then maybe something like-"

" _So...cool…!_ " Ruby drawled, her eyes sparkling with awe and wonder, to which Weiss smacked her head at her partner's simplicity.

"Well, if Younger Me likes it, then _I_ like it; Crimson Thorne it is!" The newly monikered Crimson Thorne then stood up and cracked her knuckles, "Anywho, who wants to do some training; I promised I'd help with that, didn't I?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

In another part of the school, on one of the many balconies, two opponents were locked in a furious battle the likes of which had not been seen since...yesterday.

Nora and Ren were standing off to the side, watching their teammates duel.

"Jauney sure has gotten better since Initiation," the bubbly berserker said, munching on a bag of popcorn. "I mean, at first he was all like 'ACk! No! Spare me, I'm too young to die!', and then, when he was fighting that Ursa he was all 'Not today, Ursa!'! And now he's all 'Ho! Ha-ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Spin! Haha! Dodge! Thrust'-"

"Nora?"

"Yes, Ren?"

"...you're absolutely right."

"I know!~" She held out her popcorn to him, "Want some?"

While Nora and her childhood bestie snacked, Jaune and Pyrrha continued their bout, only marginally aware of their teammates watching. They both blocked and parried each other's strikes, both standing their ground against the other. It appears as though they were evenly matched.

Jaune blocked another swing from Pyrrha's weapon, bashing it to the side with Crocea Mors' shield, and made to swing his sword down at her head.

"Stop!" she declared, lowering her weapons, "That was incorrect; start from the beginning."

"Aw come on!" the knight protested, "I was just about to win!"

"You were going to use an illegal move," she explained, "you would have been disqualified if this were a proper tournament. "

"But this isn't a tournament, we're just sparring!" Then a look of hurt waged over his face, "You're not just doing this so I can't actually win, are you? Because my sisters would do this all the time, and they-"

"Jaune...," she admonished, smiling gently, "if I didn't want to lose against you, I wouldn't have bothered helping you train all this time."

"So then why-?"

"Because tournament fighting is different from fighting the creatures of Grimm; in a tournament, head strikes with weapons are illegal because the head is the most fragile part of the body. If someone's Aura was low and they were hit with, say, a sword-" she pointed at Jaune's sword for emphasis "-then the victim could get a serious concussion at the very least, and that's only if you use the flat of the blade."

Jaune looked over his frowning as he turned it over. "...so what's the right way to hit someone?"

"Here, I'll show you." The Mistrali athlete maneuvered around behind the young knight and manipulating his arms with hers.

They both blushed a moment later.

"Time to go, Nora." Ren grabbed Nora's arm, tugging her off the balcony, "let's leave them be."

"Awwww!" she whined, "But it was just getting _romanti-_ Mmmm!"

After the other two left, Pyrrha went back to "training mode". "When you go to hit your opponent, swing like this-" she swung his arm in a sideways motion "-and hold your sword so that you strike with the flat or the hilt."

Jaune shifted his grip on the sword, "You mean like this?"

"Good. You should always try to do this, even if you opponent has a shield; judges will deduct points if they catch you using the edge."

"OK, I'll…*gulp!*, keep that in mind…."

"Is something wrong?"

"Nope! Nothing's wrong! Everything's fine! ...how are you?" He turned his head around, not realizing how close Pyrrha and he were. Upon seeing turning both their faces flushed crimson, and suddenly neither had any clue what to do next, their brains just shut off. After what seemed like an eternity they both started leaning towards each other, unaware or uncaring that it was happening, the other person the only thing on their minds. As they got closer and closer to each other-

"Guys, you gotta come see this!" Nora hollered, bursting back out onto the balcony all of a sudden, "There's this really cool looking woman beating up all the upperclassmen in Mrs. Goodwitch's classroom, it's freaking _awesome_!" Then she noticed how awkward there were being, suddenly standing three feet apart and each rubbing their right shoulders. "...did I come at a bad time?"

"N-n-not at all," Pyrrha stammered, "w-we were just finishing up!" She picked up her weapons from where she set them before her "moment" with Jaune, heading sheepishly for the doorway, "Come, Jaune, let's go see this remarkable woman Nora mentioned." She hurried past her bubbly, ginger teammate, her gaze focused on the floor in front of her the whole time.

Jaune wanted to call after her and tell her to wait for him and explain what just happened...but some invisible, internal force prevented his body from actually doing what he wanted it to, and by the time control has returned to his limbs she had already disappeared around the corner.

He looked at Nora pleadingly, as if she held the answers he needed top message what just happened clear.

She just shrugged. "Women," she said by way of explanation, and then turn to follow the red headed warrior.

"Dammit," he sighed, reluctantly following after one third of his voice female friends. There eye a million and a half confusing thoughts and feelings swirling around inside his head, and he needed a distraction before they overwhelmed him; maybe this mystery woman of Nora's would do the trick.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Future Ruby- or Crimson, as she'd decided to go by -was probably the most amazing fighter the girls of RWBY had ever seen in their entire lives! She'd been approached by one of the third year teams when their group had entered the main corridor and she'd if they wanted to watch the boys (it was a team of four young men, a la CRDL) practice for the upcoming tournament. Crimson then made some condescending remark about watching the kiddies play, and they challenged her to a 4 vs.1 match.

It was Crimson's idea to let them use their weapons while she used only her fists.

"Wasn't Team CRBN supposed to be really, really good?" Yang asked, transfixed on the spectacle before her. "Like...in the top three teams in all of Beacon good?"

Crimson had not stopped moving since the fight started. Now that she wasn't high on confusion from getting thrown into the past, it was explicitly clear how good she was; since the fight started she'd been in total control, toying with and taunting Team CRBN for the first couple of minutes. After that she went on the offensive, knocking three of the four boys over before lazily defending herself against the fourth. When the first three started picking themselves up she knocked number four back and proceeded to knock them around in turn so there was always one of them boys fighting her at any given time.

This had been going on for fifteen minutes straight.

"I don't think you can beat her," the dark Faunus said, watching as the elder Ruby effortlessly flipped one of CRBN onto their back, "Maybe you could in Vale when she was out of sorts, but not now."

"That sounds like a challenge to me!" the blonde declared, "I still owe her some payback from earlier!"

"Go Crimson!" Ruby cheered, enthralled at the sheer prowess her older self displayed. She was holding one of the "RWBY" pennants that Blake had for some reason (now with "Crimson" hastily written over it), waving it above her head as she cheered.

"Is that all you guys got?" Crimson taunted as she lightly kicked one of CRBN in his rear, "Come on; my _dog_ could beat you pussies up!"

"Don't you dare!" Weiss glared at Yang, who had her finger in the air and was about to comment.

" _Pffft, I could take her!"_

RWBY all turned to the source of the boast, finding Cardin emerging from the crowd that had gathered.

"I dunno, man," Russel cautioned, "she seems pretty legit."

"It's all an act, it's gotta be!"

"Care to make make a wager on that, Winchester?" Yang called. "Say...you last a minute against her?"

" _What are you doing, Yang?_ " Ruby asked her sister in hushed whispers

" _Emasculating a bully_ ," she responded, " _Trust me, it'll be great!_ "

"I can last _three_!" he boasted, "But if I want to last that long, there has to be some incentive it in for me, right?"

Yang leaned back, folding her arms across her chest confidently, "What'd you have in mind?"

"If I go the distance," he said, walking over to the brawler, "then I want a date with Ice Queen."

"Hey!" Weiss shrieked, "I don't agree to that-

"Deal!" Yang reached out and took Cardin's hand, shaking it heartily, "And when I make it, then you have to-"

"Wait a sec, what do you mean 'if you make it'?"

"I got dibs on fighting her, _Winchester_!" She poked him in the chest, "We have unfinished business, so when I win against her, _you_ have to wear a dress for the Vytal Festival. I'll even let you borrow one of mine."

"Here's an idea," Crimson interjected, a boy with shaggy, blond hair in a choke hold (she made sure she didn't apply enough pressure for him to pass out), "I'll fight both of you at once, and whoever goes down first, they have to pay up. Sound good?" Both youths nodded, and Crimson released her hostage. "Sorry boys," she told CRBN, "come back when your mommies stop feeding you baby food!" Then she turned back to Yang and Cardin, "And to make it fair, I'll let you two use Semblances and weapons, and I'll even put one hand behind my back." She did so, motioning with her other hand for them to "come at her".

"Tch, your funeral!" Yang said, activating Ember Celica.

Cardin unhooked his mace from his belt, running straight at Crimson and swinging his bludgeon at her face. She dodged at the last possible second, the cold metal barely brushing against the tips of her hair. She chopped him across the back of the neck, then turned to block a flurry of punches as Yang began her own onslaught. The blonde brawler let loose blast after blast from Ember Celica, which Crimson all batted away like they were nothing.

Cardin recovered from his casual brushing off and swung his mace at the ground, creating a string of explosions that snaked its way towards Crimson. The older woman kicked her sister (from the past) away, turning around and scissor kicking the ground in the path of the explosions. This caused a small crater to form just as the explosions reached her, canceling them out. As the smoke hung in the air, Cardin leaped through it, gripping his mace above his head with both hands.

"It's over, lady!" he shouted, bringing the weapon straight down on her.

"Crimson!" Ruby cried as another explosion occurred, obscuring both combatants from the gathered crowd.

It was around this point that Nora brought in the two lovebirds of her team (also known as Jaune and Pyrrha), meeting back up with Ren.

"What'd we miss?" she asked.

"Yang and Cardin are fighting that Crimson woman," the stoic gunman explained, "They made a bet which one would last longer against her."

Gasps could be heard from around the audience as the smoke began to clear, growing more numerous and louder when the fighters were finally revealed again; Crimson was holding Cardin's mace above her head effortlessly, looking none the worse for wear, and Cardin looking perplexed and angry at the same time.

"B-b-but...how did…?" he stammered.

"Years of practice," she said, pushing him back so hard that he collided with the wall. Crimson turned back to Yang, cracking her neck. "Your move, _babe_!"

Now, Yang actually had fairly good control over her temper, it was kind of required if she wanted to return to places ever. She'd been called many things in her short life: stupid girl, blondy, bimbo, tramp, "Yangypoo" (her relatives), Little Dragon (her father), idiot (Weiss), and a few that she wouldn't repeat in the presence of her sister (regardless of whether her sister was 15 or 25). But above all else, the thing she most hated being called was "babe". No clue why, it just always got under her skin; it was the one surefire way to get her into "rage mode".

 _"Nobody. Calls. Me. Babe,"_ she growled, her eyes glowing red and hair glowing gold as her Semblance flared. She launched herself forward, her fist pulled back for a devastating blow. Crimson responded in kind, preparing her own fist to intercept.

"I can't look!" Ruby cried, squinting her eyes shut and hiding behind Weiss, who squirmed uncomfortably due to the 15 year old reaper now attached to her waist.

"Get off me, dolt!" she grunted.

They collided, each first hitting the other, the explosion of pure force radiating out from the point of impact.

Yang flew back, crashing into a couple students unlucky enough to be in the trajectory.

"Yang!" Ruby rushed over to where her sister landed, kneeling beside her and worriedly looking her over. Weiss and Blake followed, also concerned for their fellow teammate (and partner to one).

"Did someone get the number of that Goliath that he me?" she asked woozily.

"She's OK!" Ruby cheered, embracing her sister in the tightest hug she could manage.

Yang winced slightly.

"I'm fine too, thanks for asking!" Crimson said from the floor, shaking out the wrist she used to counter Yang before mumbling _"Forgot how hard she hits..."_

Just then, the crowd parted and an irate (read: normal) looking Glynda Goodwitch stomped through, holding her riding crop so hard her knuckles were white.

"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded, "I will not allow some random Huntress to just waltz in here and start harassing the student for laughs! ...and you don't even have a proctor here to monitor Aura! Of all the- someone could have been seriously hurt or killed because they depleted their Aura and didn't notice!" She glared at Crimson, her arms folded imposingly over her chest, "I certainly hope you have a good reason for this, madam!"

Crimson glanced up at the woman speaking to her, and upon realizing who it was jackknifed to her feet and snapped a crisp salute, all while standing ramrod straight.

"I apologize, Commander," she said, eyes fixed straight ahead, "I wasn't thinking and let my emotions get the better off me. I will accept whatever punishment you deem worthy."

Glynda was taken aback by this. She was completely expecting this woman (who bore a startling resemblance to Ruby Rose, now that she thought about it) to backtalk and try to defend her actions, given her roguish attire, not owe up to it and _most certainly_ not ask for her punishment for it.

It was...odd, actually having things play out like they were supposed to. It was also odd for her to be referred to as 'Commander', but she'd tackle _that_ hurdle in private.

"Um, alright then...follow me." She briefly turned to the gathered students, "If any of you still have a class today, please head there immediately."

As she and Crimson left, so did most of the students. CRDL was helping their leader up, but they all managed to leave too. Teams RWBY and JNPR, however, were both too shocked to follow the crowd, instead trying to make sense of what they just witnessed, each for different reasons.

Jaune scratched his head. "...so am I the only one who doesn't know what's going on here?" he asked, to which everyone collectively shook their heads.

Except for Nora, she was busy eating her popcorn.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _You get five guesses where the theme song fits into the chapter, and if you actually need the other four to figure it out, then there;s just no hope for you._

 _So Future Ruby finally has a proper name so as not to confuse her with normal Ruby and because always calling her "Future Ruby" all the time. Also, I should take this time to point out that Crimson sounds like Lindsey Jones (Ruby's voice actress). I probably should have mentioned this last chapter when she was introduced proper, but better late than never I suppose._

 _And yes, I have plans for Yang and Pyrrha and Crimson and other characters further on. ESPECIALLY Crimson. Oh boy, the things I have planned!_


	5. A glimpse forward

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Glynda headed for Ozpin's office with the now strangely compliant woman in tow, trying to get a handle on her. One minute she's hearing from Team CRBN about some madwoman that seemed to be having fun beating them up, and when she goes to investigate she finds the woman sitting in a mess of a classroom with Miss Xiao-Long and Mister Winchester nursing minor injuries, and when she goes to confront her, she suddenly becomes one of James's soldier boys.

It was somewhat unexpected, to say the least.

"Permission to speak, Ma'am?"

"I'm not in the military," Glynda explained, "you don't need to act so formally around me."

"But you're the-" she started to say before she suddenly smacked herself in the head. " _Of course_ you're not the Commander yet; _stupid stupid stupid_!" She punctuated each "stupid" with another headsmack. " _Dammit Commander, you really did a number on me, didn't you?"_

"If you don't mind me asking," Glynda asked, coming to a stop and turning around to face the soldier woman, "and forgive me for sounding rude, but who exactly are you?"

"Ruby Rose, Lieutenant, 06221981," she recited before shaking her head, "Sorry, reflex. Let's try this again." She held out her hand, "Hi there, I'm Ruby Rose, and I'm from the future."

On the scale of crazy things Glynda heard from her students (mostly excuses relating to incomplete assignments), this was completely new. "...I- ...you- Um…." She was at a complete loss for how to respond to this claim, it was so out of the norm. "I think Ozpin should hear this."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Neo was absolutely _miserable!_ Stupid Cinder and her stupid plans!...

Why in all of Remnant she felt the need to make Roman the sacrificial lamb when there were _plenty_ of random White Fang grunts that would have been better patsies would forever be a mystery to her.

She never liked Cinder, with her slutty dress and her mysterious plans and her never telling Roman anything important... Mercury and Emerald weren't any better, basically going along with everything Cinder said like a couple of lost, housebroken puppies _no she was not exactly like that with Roman!_ She did her own thing, it was just that Roman often lead to good opportunities for her. (Like when she got to play with that blonde tart, even though that masked bitch ruined that in the end...) And Adam Taurus was...there. He never really did anything useful, he was mostly just another number on Cinder's Scroll.

Though apparently he was starting to actually participate, if the scattered reports she'd overheard could be believed.

But forget about all that for now, she was her own woman again! She'd been meaning to take some time off after the the train job anyway, even before the masked bitch chased her off and she heard about Roman's arrest, and now here she was, sitting in a trendy little ice-cream parlor in the nice part of Vale, about to tuck into a much deserved treat after all that-

"Here you go, Miss." The waitress, a pretty red headed girl around her own height, placed a bowl of ice-cream on the table, arranging a napkin and spoon to the side. "Please enjoy your dessert!~" she said perkily. "Will there be anything else?"

Neo shook her head and picked up the spoon, ready to lose herself in the medley of Wonderfulness that sat before her. The dish looked positively immaculate, with three different flavors scooped in perfectly even portions. There was whipped cream on the center scoop (which was chocolate, for the record) with the most delicious looking cherry on top, and chocolate syrup lightly drizzled over the whole ensemble in a zigzag pattern.

She scope a bit of each flavor (strawberry and vanilla in addition to the chocolate) and daintily slipped it into her mouth, letting the cocktail sit on her tongue for a moment so as to properly gauge the deliciousness inherent in all forms of-

Average. It was painfully, pitifully _average_. It tasted like someone made it with the cheapest ingredients possible. She looked at the menu card that stood on her table, eyes widening when she saw the price. They were charging _that_ for _this_ piece of crap? It was positively _criminal_ , and not in the good way!

She sighed, wishing Roman were here with her. For some reason ice-cream always seemed to taste better when he was around. She couldn't explain it, it just did. Like the time after those girls (blonde tart included) broke the first Paladin mech he got and they ended up at a cheap 24 hour drugstore. She ended up "borrowing" a couple individual cones, one of which she shared with the bowler hat wearing baddie. They had too many nuts in them and they were slightly freezer burnt, but that didn't matter since they were eating them together.

She plucked the cherry off the top and tossed it away; she was never really one for actual fruit in her Perfection, so she always let Roman have them. He never seemed to mind, and it became something of a tradition whenever she got a sundae.

 _Gawd_ she wished he were here right now!

...OK, _maybe_ she relied on Roman more than she'd like to admit, but not as much as the Wonder Twins did Cinder.

She still wished he was here, though.

Sticking the spoon in vanilla scoop she rose from her seat, leaving a generous tip for the red head. It wasn't her fault that the food sucked, and she _did_ provide good service. Plus, maybe if she made enough then she could leave this place and follow her dreams.

Pondering what to do with the rest of her day, Neo walked down the street, content with the fact that she'd successfully stiffed the sub par eatery.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Ozpin listened intently to the woman Glynda brought to see him. If she didn't look as much like Ruby Rose as she did then even he would have a hard time believing her claims, he'd freely admit that. He was still skeptical, he couldn't afford to not be in his position, but something in gut (and something in the discreet medical scan he ran on her after she sat down) told him that she was who she said she was.

"I just have one question for you," he said, leaning back in his chair.

"OK, shoot." Crimson leaned back as well, matching his posture.

"When we met for the first time, what was the first thing I said to you?"

"You told me I had silver eyes," Crimson said, "which has _always_ bugged me, because for the life of me I could _never_ figure out why that would even matter-"

"That will do, Miss Rose. Or do you prefer 'Crimson Thorne'?"

"Probably Crimson, just so you don't confuse me with the Ruby from this time." She then spun her chair around, straddling it like she was riding a motorcycle. "Feel free to ask me anything, I don't mind."

"...very well. To start, how exactly were you able to travel back in time? As I understand it, practical time travel is still confined to the realm of theory."

Crimson sighed dejectedly, "If I wasn't sitting here talking to you right now, I'd completely agree with you. But Honestly? I have no idea how Insano's crazy machine works, or how he was able to get it to do what it does in the first place."

"I'm sorry," Glynda said, "'Insano'?"

"Oh! Uh, he real name's actually Dr. Noah, but I just call him that because he's kind of a crackpot. Anyway," she shook herself back on track, "he apparently figured out how to rework some kind of teleporter doohickey- no, I don't know _that_ works either -so that it broke through the time barrier or some shit like that. He said they're probably be side effects from the trip, and judging by how I thought I was dreaming when I came to and thought my sister and Blake were hallucinations he was annoyingly right."

"I suppose that would explain why you confused me for this Commander person before...," Glynda mused.

"Actually," Crimson rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, "that was just me being stupid. Sorry, ehe heh heh!" When she noticed Glynda's raised eyebrow of confusion, she explained, "In the future, after the Robots took over, you eventually become the leader of the resistance movement. You, uh...kinda became even more ruthless than you already are…."

Glynda scoffed, appalled at the insinuation that she was (and continued to be) a tyrant.

"I'm sure she'll have her reasons," Ozpin said (" _Professor!_ ") placatingly. "Now, you mentioned robots?"

"Yessir."

"Then I take it you're also familiar with a certain Arnold Schwarzenheimer film?"

"You know, that's the second time today that's come up." She reached for her Scroll, and after a few whacks got up and handed it to the headmaster. "Play the latest message, it should explain everything better than I can."

Ozpin opened the messages and selected the topmost one, Glynda leaning over his shoulder as the message played.

An image of an older looking Glynda in white military fatigues appeared on the screen.

" _To whoever is watching this, I pray that this message isn't reaching you too late,"_ Commanded Glynda said, " _This is Commander Glynda Goodwitch of the Dead Fantasy, and if you're watching this, then right now you're speaking with Lieutenant Rose and she has successfully traveled back in time before everything takes a turn for the worst. If by some chance my past self is watching, then Essmyrren wins."_ A light blush appeared on Glynda's face, both the future and present versions. The camera then pans around and shows a decimated Vale commercial district, with buildings in disrepair so bad that it was amazing how they were able to stay up at all. " _This used to be Vale Square and buildings surrounding the CCT tower."_ The camera turned back to her, " _The Tower is one of only a few location on the entire continent that is still untouched by the mechanical hoards, thanks to the combined efforts of men and women of science, as well as the remaining Huntsmen and Huntresses. ...Optimistic predictions don't give us more than a few months at the absolute most before our countermeasures fail and this place is overrun. If by some miracle we survive and discover a way to deal a decisive blow against the enemy, well...salvage operations would be mostly fruitless; for all intents and purposes Vytal is dead, and we're those last few stubborn heartbeats at the end. On behalf of all the men, women and Faunus who lost their lives in this bloody war, I beseech you to discover what caused this and put an end to it before the damage becomes irreversible. We-"_ Her face suddenly took on a look of terror as she spotted something in the distance. " _S.K.'s! Everyone, back inside; whoever knows how to fire a gun, get up to the turrets NOW!"_ The video ended on an image of a ball of fire erupting next to Glynda, a "replay" button hovering over the frozen still.

"They're probably already dead," Crimson stated morosely, taking her Scroll back, "They needed all the power we had so I could make the trip back."

"I don't suppose my condolences would mean anything?" Ozpin asked.

"No, but thanks for trying." She slumped back in her chair. "I take it that erases any lingering doubts?"

"Quite effectively…," Glynda said, acting like she _wasn't_ blushing furiously.

"Indeed." Ozpin took a sip of his coffee, "So what are your plans now that you're here?"

"Try to find out what fucks up the future and keep it from happening," Crimson shrugged, "other than that, I guess make a life for myself."

"So let me get this straight," Glynda said, counting off points on her fingers, "you traveled back in time with no idea what caused the state your future was in, no idea how to find said information, no idea what to do with the information once you get it, and your master plan is, essentially, to just 'wing it'?"

"Yep," she said, popping the P, "pretty good considering virtually all information was lost or destroyed and, as you clearly saw, we get attacked all the time." Then she added "Also, it was _your_ plan."

Glynda rightly shut up after that, harrumphing.

"Crimson, please stop harassing my best teacher," Ozpin said, standing up. He walked around his desk, "Now, if you're willing to indulge me in a bit of poetic irony…" He leaned forward invitingly, smiling, "How would you like to come to my school?"

For a moment Crimson just stared at the headmaster.

"...you're serious?"

"Absolutely," he nodded, "You'll need a place to stay, and if the reports I've been hearing are to be believed, you're probably one of the best living fighters in the world at the moment. I've been seeing a lot of writing on the wall as of late and I'm willing to take chances to make sure my students aren't caught unaware."

"You want me to be a teacher?"

"Yes I do."

"Are you sure? Cause the whole reason I'm up here is that I was beating up the people you want me to teach. Hell, I'm not even sure I'm any _good_ at teaching!"

"If there's one thing I've learned about you since you coming here, it's that when you apply yourself, you're able to accomplish great things," he said, taking another sip of coffee. "Besides," he continued, "it'll be much easier for us to talk with each other if I don't have cross half of Remnant to find you."

Crimson sighed, defeated but accepting. "Well, who am I to argue with the Great and Powerful Wizard of Beacon?"

"Good, then you can start a few days from now, after you've settled in." He sat back down, motioning fit Glynda to take notes. "Now, I have a few questions for you before you leave, in light of what's been learned here..."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

By the time Professor Port's class had gotten out ("Blah blah blah had a weak spot right beneath his blah blah blah blah blah which reminds me of a story where blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah _with my bear hands!_ ") Team RWBY was exhausted; because the Vytal Festival was drawing near the rotund teacher had decided it was a good idea to personally assess each of his students before they competed in the the tournament.

Apparently, this involved putting each student against one his seemingly endless stock of Boarbatusks (which he all named "Edgar" for some reason...) in an attempt to gauge their combat prowess.

"I'm _starving!_ " Yang stated, trudging in back of their little group, "I don't remember those things being so tough the last time we fought one."

"Those two things aren't even _remotely_ connected," Weiss pointed out.

"You were keeping track of all the Grimm you killed yesterday?" Blake wondered.

"Oh heck no! I meant that one Weiss killed a while back." She mimed thrusting a weapon into something before returning to trudging. "But seriously, can we go get something to eat? I feel like there's this void where my stomach should be."

"I'm kinda hungry too," Ruby agreed, patting her belly, "the last time I ate anything was breakfast."

"Same here," said Blake.

"I didn't even _get_ to eat breakfast!" the blonde brawler complained, "We ran off before I can finish my sandwich, remember?"

Weiss shook her head, "Not really; I was looking for a communications terminal when whatever you said happened."

"Which reminds me, when are you going to share what was in the documents you got from your company?"

"I suppose over lunch," Weiss sighed, "seeing as that's probably where we're headed anyway-"

As if in agreement, her stomach chose that moment to make a tiny gurgling sound.

"Well, I guess that makes it unanimous," said Ruby, pointing emphatically down the hallway, "to the cafeteria!"

"It's _that_ way," Blake said, pointing in the opposite direction.

"I knew that!" The young leader was undeterred, immediately turning around and marching down the correct path.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

The large hall of the cafeteria wasn't as crowded as it normally was. Many of the students were most likely helping at the site of the Breach, and the many that remained there were probably busy either practicing for the tournament or devoting the time to studying. Either way, it just felt odd to see so few people here when there _wasn't_ a Food Fight To End All Food Fights! going on.

However, that didn't mean there wasn't anything interesting going on…

"Hey guys!" Crimson called to the girls, her mouth stuffed with food, "What's shakin'?"

"You know, you're gonna get fat if you keep packing away food like that." Yang gestured to the veritable _feast_ set before her sister from the future; two full roast turkeys, a plate of spare ribs, five two litre bottles of People Like Grapes soda, a huge bowl of popcorn, a huge bowl of salad, a huge bowl of _fruit_ salad, three stacks of 15 pancakes each (and requisite giant bottle syrup), a huge platter of nachos, and about ten plates piled high with chocolate chip cookies.

"Lay off!" she protested after swallowing, "For the last seven years of my life I've had to survive on emergency rations and canned animal foods, let me have this!" She proceeded to carve a wedge out of the pancakes, douse it in syrup, and devour it in only two bites.

"Whoa…!" Ruby gasped, drooling slightly at the sight of all the cookies.

"Is that even healthy?" Blake asked, blanching in disgust as Crimson gobbled up a handful of popcorn, washing it down with one of the bottles of soda.

 _The entire bottle of soda_.

"*bluuuuuuuurp!*" was her eloquent rebuttal. "Don't be shy, there's enough here to feed an army!"

"Yay!" Ruby cheered, immediately going to town on a plate of cookies.

"So what did Mrs. Goodwitch want with you?" Weiss asked, scooping some fruit salad into a bowl.

"Yeah," Yang added, "you were gone for a good while." She grabbed the nachos and one of the soda bottles.

"She wanted to bust my balls about fighting that Team CRBN and you and Cardin." Crimson held up a finger, "By the way, I fully plan on holding him to the bet you two made, mark my word!"

Yang pumped her fist in victory.

"Anyway," she continued, stealing a cookie out of her younger self's hand and wolfing it down in one bite, "I explained who I was and where I came from and she took me to Ozpin. We talked for a little bit, and long story short, he gave me a job here." She gave a big, cheesy smile (some crumbs fell from her mouth), "Congratulations, girls; I'm your new teacher!"

Weiss, Blake and Yang all did spit takes, surprised by the news.

Ruby was sobbing over the loss of her Precious (read: cookie).

"For real?" Yang asked, looked elated, "That's awesome! You're gonna be the best teacher ever!"

"Oh I don't know about _that_ …," the older woman said bashfully, blushing slightly.

"I think you'll make a great teacher," Ruby said, comforting her older self. "You're from the future, so you already know all the answers to everything!"

Weiss lightly bonked her younger partner lightly ("Owies!") on the head, "That's not how that works, you dunce!"

"She's right," Crimson nodded, ripping a drumstick from one of the turkeys, "I don't get points for knowing all the answers- which isn't the case anyway; I'm suppose to get _you_ _guys_ to know the answers."

"...oh," Ruby said dumbly.

"What class will you be teaching?" Blake asked.

"Probably something to do with combat, given what Ozpin said," she said as she tore into her turkey leg, "He said I could take some time to settle in, so there's a few places I want to go in the next few days." She put her food down, her face turning solemn, "I'd like it if you four were with me for emotional support."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Mercury, Emerald, and Cinder all sat in their room at Beacon, reviewing their plans.

"So what's our next move?" Mercury asked, reverse straddling a chair, "we lost Mr. Personality and his pet, but we got Adam Taurus instead; what does that mean?"

"It means that we now have someone who can control the White Fang and be controlled in turn," Cinder explained, "With his help we can leave our pawns to their own devices while _we_ focus on setting things up for the next phase of the plan."

Emerald grinned, "You mean we're gonna...?"

"We are," she nodded. "You and Mercury can start your recruitment drive here; the more allies we have when the kettle blows, the better."

"Alright then, mission 'round up all the idealists who think "the Man" sucks and can do a lot of damage when the time comes' is a go!"

"And what about Pyrrha Nikos?" the silver haired boy asked, "she seems like she's be a tough nut to crack."

"Have no fear," the enigmatic woman said, shifting her position from where she sat on her bed, "I'm going to make Miss Nikos my personal project; by the time I'm done she'll be eating out of my hand like a starving cat."

"Just don't forget about us," Emerald protested, jumping on the bed behind Cinder and wrapping her arms around her shoulders, "you know how jealous I get when you hang out with other people."

Mercury made a whipping motion with his hand, "Whah-chh!"

"Oh shut up, you!" Emerald tossed a pillow at her partner, which he easily swatted out of the way.

"Now now, let's play nice." Cinder turned her head and kissed emerald full on the lips, the dark skinned girl reciprocating eagerly. "We have the rest of the day to ourselves, so let's have a little pleasure before business, shall we?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Do you really think Miss Thorne will be a good teacher?" Glynda asked later on. She didn't want to question her boss's methods, but she was going to be working with the woman, and she wanted to know what to expect.

"I believe she will," Ozpin said, "at least, in regard to what she'll be teaching."

Glynda nodded, thinking it over. After reviewing footage from the classroom it was clear that the future Ruby Rose had more than filled out her role as a prodigy; she all but made fools of Team CRBN, one of the highest ranked teams in the school, was able to stop a Dust explosion using only her body, and had been able to withstand Miss Xiao-Long's Semblance with only minor injuries.

...but then there were reports from Vale about Miss Thorne that concerned her. The fact that she just lived the last decade of her life in a war zone must have had some negative effects on her emotional development, a theory that was at least partially confirmed by something she heard about one of the rescue teams in Vale as well as stories she'd heard from James about retired soldiers (another reason he pushed so hard for an unmanned battleground).

"Something's on your mind," he noted, glancing at her knowingly.

She sighed. "Is it that obvious?"

"No," he chuckled, "but I've known you long enough to pick up on your little quirks." Then his face became serious. "It's about Crimson," he said, more a statement than a question.

"Frankly, yes. I'm worried about her mental state. From what little I know on the subject and from what James has said-"

"James?"

"Yes, James; we correspond with each other once a month. My point is that Miss Thorne might very well have emotional and psychological issues, coming from the environment she did. Speaking with the welfare of the students in mind, I don't believe putting her in a position of authority is a wise move."

Ozpin nodded solemnly, "I'm inclined to agree with you about that. However, I believe that is a problem we can treat as it comes." He took out his Scroll, opening it up to it's wide mode and handing it to Glynda, "Take a look at this and tell me what you see."

Glynda took the device and looked at the information scrolling across the screen; it was the medical scan the headmaster took. She silently read off the statistics, not finding anything out of the ordinary until coming to one specific bit of information.

"My god! I never thought it was possible for Aura levels to fall that low!"

"Precisely."

"But...she should be near catatonic with levels like these! How in all of Remnant is she able to function like this?" She handed the Scroll back to him.

" _That_ is the question I'd like answered the most. Did she intuitively discover a new technique? If so, can it be taught? We're going to need every advantage possible in the tournament this year."

"Professor!" She gasped, balking at how cavalier the headmaster was being in the face of-

"I was joking," Ozpin admonished, waving her to calm down. "It appears they were right; you _are_ easy to mess with."

"I am not!" she protested vehemently. As usual, the headmaster of Beacon continued to be the only person on the planet who could make her revert to a petulant teenager. "...And who says that about me?!"

"Besides," he continued, ignoring Glynda's fit, "I genuinely want to talk with Miss Thorne again; it's not every day you meet someone from the future, after all."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"So where are we going, anyway?" Weiss asked as the group piled onto the Bullhead.

"Mom's grave," the woman said, "I haven't been there in _years_."

"But we go every year with Dad," Ruby pointed out, a little confused, "do you just not have enough time in the future?"

"Pretty much," she shrugged, "Well, that and the place got blown to kingdom come." She chuckled when she noticed the looks of stunned shock on the girls' faces (Ruby and Yang looked the most shocked). "Yeah, that's about the reaction I had when I learned it happened. ...only with more cursing and swearing of vengeance."

"I'm so sorry," Blake said, patting Crimson's shoulder.

"Thanks. It's cool, though, it didn't happened until five years ago for me." She gently pried Blake's hand away, "But that won't happen for a _loooong_ time for you guys, and it never will if I have anything to say about it!"

"Sounds like something I'd say," Yang noted.

"Well, you kind of rub off on me a lot over the years," she explained.

"Really? What am I like in the future?" The blonde leaned forward, eager to find out what kind of woman she became.

"Well," Crimson stated, "you cut your hair-"

"Bullshit!" Yang called immediately.

"Nope, it's absolutely true! Your hair kept getting grabbed in battle so you chopped most of it off. I believe your reasoning for it was something along the lines of 'fuck it'."

"Good to know you become so vulgar in the future," Weiss intoned.

"Does she still snore?" Ruby asked.

Crimson snorted, "Louder than ever!"

"I don't snore _now_!" Yang protested.

"You kind of do," Blake rebutted, "take it from someone who lives below you at night."

"Oh come on, how could you possible even-"

Blake wordlessly pointed to her bow, her face deadpan.

"Oh..."

"You really should lose that thing," Crimson said, taking out her flask. "You look ten times better without it, and I'm sure your boyfriend would love it."

"I-I don't have a boyfriend," the Faunus protested a little too quickly, her face rouging slightly.

"So you and Sun 'hey everyone, look at my abs that could grate all of the cheese' Wukong _aren't_ going at it like animals?" Yang paused for laughter, to which she received none.

"Do either if you mind?" Blake asked both Ruby's, each shaking their heads. (Crimson took a sip from her flask.) Double permission secured, she smacked Yang upside the head for her ("Ow!") pun.

"That was both insensitive and racist," she informed Yang as the blonde rubbed her sore noggin.

"Meanie..."

"That _was kind_ of a bad one," Crimson agreed, "even by your own low standards." She took another swig from her flask, only to realize that it was now empty. "Damn," she sighed, "forgot to fill it up at the school... And before anyone asks, yes, she still makes her puns."

"So you're saying the future is _worse_ than you're making it out to be?" Weiss asked, seeking clarification.

Crimson laughed, "Pretty much, yeah!"

Yang simply pouted childishly (Ruby she was not), annoyed that everyone apparently hated fun.

"So what are you going to do when we get to Mom's grave?" Ruby asked her future double.

"Pay my long overdue respects, try not to turn into a blubbering wreck," she shrugged. "If it's alright with you guys I was hoping to get a little training in before we head back."

"I don't have a problem with that," Blake said, "but are Ruby and Yang OK with us doing that next to Summer's grave?"

"I guess so," Ruby shrugged, "I mean, it's not like we're going to decimate the place with our training, right?"

"I think you mean 'desecrate'," Weiss corrected.

"Both work," Blake said before an argument could get going. She turned to her partner, "You OK with training, Yang?"

Yang mumbled something under her breath.

"She's fine with it," Blake informed the others.

Crimson clapped her hands together, "Alrighty then; first crying, then training! I hope you girls like Beowolves!"

Weiss was about to agree when she suddenly registered what Crimson had said, "Wait, what?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _By jove, doth that be plot setup I do espy? (As and aside, this is another way my story differs from Remnant's Reclaimer: multiple focuses instead of a primarily singularly focused narrative.)_

 _So this chapter was mostly for exposition's sake. Some things are going to come into play later, as well as some stuff in the upcoming chapter, so pay attention, folks!_

 _Also, we get a look into the future Crimson came from, plus a couple reference to the Almighty Creator himself, Monty; one of is pretty easy to spot, but the other is more subtle. In fact, if you can spot it, I'll let you design a minor character that will be featured in the upcoming Tournament or the White Fang, depending on what the story requires._

 _Not really much else to say about this one, so see y'all in the next chapter! (And if anyone wants to make artwork of Crimson, be my guest!)_


	6. Rough patch

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Summer Rose's grave was pretty much the same as the last time Ruby visited it: a wide, snow laden at the edge of a forest with a stone marker right on the edge of the cliff. A light snow fell gently in the wind.

"It's beautiful," Weiss breathed, her eyes drifting over the landscape, "...it almost makes you forget that this place is infested by Beowolves."

"You are not gonna let that go, are you?" Crimson wondered. "It could be worse; this place could be a Nevermore aerie."

Ruby shuddered, memories of Initiation and Remnant: The Game coming to mind.

"You want us to come along?" Blake asked, noticing the elder Ruby looking unsure.

She shook her head, "Thanks, but I'll be fine on my own." She sucked in a deep breath and trudged over the the altar stone.

As she knelt before the grave Crimson suddenly found that she couldn't think of a single thing to say. She was...actually kind of nervous, strangely enough; everything she planned to say on the ride over here magically disappeared from her brain the moment she knelt in the snow, and try as she might she couldn't remember any of it.

"...Hi Mom," she said eventually, bopping her fingers together sheepishly. She decided to start from the beginning, "sorry for taking so long to talk with you again...though technically I guess it hasn't been as long for younger me- point is, I'm finally here, and I've got _a lot_ to catch you up on!"

While she was doing that, RWBY were waiting by the Bullhead, bored out of their skulls.

"She's not gonna be long, is she?" Yang asked, "I kinda want to get to that training she promised."

"You know, it wouldn't kill you to be a little more patient," Weiss point out.

"Eh," Yang shrugged, "I like to live in the moment."

"Does anyone hear that?" Blake was looking towards the Snowy Forest, her bow occasionally twitching.

Ruby turned in the direction of the Forest, cupping her hand over her ear.

"...nope."

"You sure? I could have sworn I heard something howl just now."

"...nope, I didn't hear anything." She turned to Blake, "But you might have; Crimson wasn't wrong when she said this was a Beowolf breeding ground."

"You know," Yang said, resigned, "you keep telling us that there are Beowolves around here, but there weren't any the last time we came, or the time before that, or the time before _that_. I'm beginning to think you've been making them up."

"But they _were!_ " the reaper whined, "I killed a bunch of them right here just before I came to Vale to see you off to Beacon-"

"Wait, _this_ is where you snuck off to before we met up in Vale?" Yang exclaimed; she'd always just assumed Ruby was off training with Uncle Qrow before she met up with her outside of Junior's, "No wonder Dad sounded so frantic when I called to say you made it into Beacon…"

"Why did you do it?" Weiss asked. "I'm not judging you, Monty knows I'm the last person to do that, but...what was so important that you felt the need to sneak off to your mother's grave site?"

"I wanted to talk to Mom before I had to say goodbye to Yang," the crimsonette revealed, "I wasn't gonna see her for at least a couple years and I didn't know what to do, and then I thought 'Mom always gave really good advice', so I came out here." She let out a long breath, shrugging "I guess I just figured talking with someone would help me see what to do, even if they didn't talk back."

"I think you ultimately made the right choice," Blake said, patting Ruby on the back.

Then a howl rang out in the relative silence, followed by many glowing, red eyes appearing in the trees.

"I'd say 'I told you so'," Weiss said, drawing Myrtenaster, "but I think the situation speaks for itself."

"Technically," Yang pointed out as she and Blake stood back to back, "you never actually told us anything; you were just paranoid about the Grimm showing up."

"And look what happened!"

"Fight now, argue later!" barked Ruby, Crescent Rose already unfolded.

As the Grimm made their presence known, Crimson was finishing up her conversation with Summer.

"...and then he asked me to be a teacher! It was- uh oh. Mom, I'm gonna have to put our conversation on hold, my past self is in a bit of a jam." She stood up and pulled on her hood on, marching back to Team RWBY, her own Crescent Rose out in sniper form. "You girls ready for that training?" she asked as she rejoined the group.

"You have a warped idea of training," Weiss pointed out, switching to the red Dust on her weapon.

"Oh, this is nothing! I used to beat up on Beowolf packs to _take a break_ from my normal training; you guys can handle them easy!" What Crimson did surprised everyone; she put her weapon away and leaped onto the Bullhead, motioning for the pilot to take off. "I'll come down if things get too hairy!" she called as the ship rose.

"Wait!..." pleaded Ruby, futilely reaching out for her future self. She just...left them there, in the middle an entire pack of Grimm! How could she just do that? Sure, she and her teammates had stood against worse odds yesterday, and Beowolves were _technically_ one of the weakest of the Grimm, and Crimson didn't actually leave the area-

Huh, maybe she _would_ make a teacher.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

James Ironwood had been staring at the security feed for Roman Torchwick's for longer than most people would consider sane in any other circumstances. He would argue to those people that this man has literally made a career out not being caught, and if he was half as crafty as he claimed then he was already planning his escape attempt; with as much as the media sensationalized his antics he was taking no chance while the Vytal Festival was going on, Vale didn't need another incident like the Breach.

He sighed, remembering the conversation (more like a court hearing, really) with the Vale Council. _He_ was now the one in charge of security for the event, not Ozpin. It pained him to steal the responsibility away from his oldest friend like that, but ultimately he answered to the government, whether his own or his friend's, and he'd just have to make the best of it.

On the screen, Torchwick was pacing. He'd been doing that for the past fifteen minutes, there not really being much else in his cell to pass the time with. After another minute of repetition he turned and looked directly at the camera.

 _"So, someone's keeping an eye on me with this thing, right? Well could you maybe pass it along that I'm hungry? I haven't eaten anything in almost two days- and no, I'm not counting that slop they gave me when they shoved me in here as_ food _. Preferably something from Gavino's if you can manage it. If so, I'll have the liver dish with fava beans, and a nice Chianti to wash it down with."_

Ironwood grimaced. There was a cruel irony going on here; whenever someone tried to ask him to share what he knew about the White Fang's plans he was frustratingly tight lipped and coy, but for everything else he was a regular chatterbox, often making ridiculous demands and generally being an ass.

 _"Oh, and I still haven't received my complimentary tin cup yet; I was informed those were standard issue for all prisoners."_

Case in point.

Having enough with the incarcerated criminal, Ironwood shut off the camera freed on his Scroll and opened the itinerary for the Festival, looking over the first day. He still had a lot to go over, and watching a livestream of cell footage wouldn't help the citizens' safety.

He'd assign someone else to keep an eye on the prisoner, and tell them to let him have a bottle of ketchup with his next meal.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Tales of Crimson's display of fighting prowess had spread around Beacon like wildfire, and soon students were begging to spar with each other in the hopes to eventually challenge the legendary woman.

The fact that it was good practice for the tournament in the Vytal Festival was also a nice fringe benefit.

"I'm flattered that you think so highly of my skills," Pyrrha told an upperclassman who had asked her to show them one of the feats she'd pulled off in her days on the tournament circuit, "really, I am, but I'm running late for my next class. Perhaps some other time?" The older student accept her answer, their eager looking smile dropping as they returned to went to search for an opponent elsewhere.

Nora looked confused. "But we don't have an-" she was about to say before Ren quickly clamped his hand over her mouth.

"Let's go see if there's any leftovers from lunch," he suggested, leading his ("Mhoh meh!") childhood down an adjacent hallway.

Jaune, while not always being the sharpest tool in the box, still picked up on his partner's little fib, "We don't have any more classes until tomorrow." He eyed the red haired Spartan warily, "What's going on, Pyrrha?"

"Nothing's going on," she said, "I simply had other plans and informed that young woman thus."

This still didn't make sense in Jaune's mind, since she'd explicitly stated over breakfast that she was perfectly content to spend her free with the rest of Team JNPR. Nothing had happened since then that he could think of that would make her want to go back on that, not unless you counted the- ...oh right, _that_.

"If you say so," he said, trying not to sound as dejected as he felt, "I'll just let you get to it then. You'll be back around dinner time, right?"

Now it was Pyrrha's turn to look confused. "I don't understand."

"Your other plans," the young knight elaborated, "If you need to be somewhere, go ahead; don't let me stop you."

"What? I..." Recognition slowly crept over her face. "Jaune, I don't have any other plans!"

"...you don't?"

"Of course not, I just said that so that person wouldn't get mad at you!" She let out an exasperated sigh, "I wanted continue our training, since Nora interrupted our last session."

"Oh…" Jaune said, his foot firmly planted in his mouth, "cause...I just thought that-"

"That I didn't like you anymore, just because I got a little embarrassed? ...I'm kind of hurt that you'd think me so fickle."

"I'm sorry!" he quickly apologized, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, "I just assumed you were…"

"Well, you assumed wrong." Pyrrha sighed, "You know, now that I think about it, maybe it would be a good idea if we spent some time by ourselves." She turned and walked back the way they came, then stopped. "I'll cook you dinner to make up for this."

As Pyrrha disappeared down the hallway Jaune's hand formed an irresistible attraction with his forehead.

"I am such an idiot…," he said (to no one). He was quickly realizing that despite all the headway he'd made with Pyrrha, he still had a lot to learn about girls. And not just girls in general, he could thank his sisters for a couple unwanted lessons on that front, but being in a relationship with one.

That _was_ what he and Pyrrha were, right? A couple? Sure they hadn't said so in so many words, but given what had happened at the Dance and had been about to happen on the balcony earlier, it was a pretty safe bet that they'd moved past the "just friends" stage.

And Jaune felt like he'd been thrown into the deep end of the pool without his X-Ray and Vav themed swimmies on.

He needed advice if he was to have any hope at all of salvaging this... _mess_ he'd gotten himself into. Of course he couldn't go up to just _anyone_ and start spilling his problems to them, he got beaten up enough before Cardin finally backed off, thank you very much! He needed someone who would be willing to listen to him and had knowledge about girls (hopefully), and who wouldn't blab around Beacon about his woes. It would also help if the person he found only knew him in passing, a good acquaintance at most; this would ensure that on the off chance that his woes _were_ gossiped about then it would be less likely that the two of them would run into any mutual friends. He hoped.

And the person who fit all those qualifiers was undoubtedly-

"Why Mr. Arc, fancy running into you, here!"

Jaune whirled around and saw Professor Port standing behind him, waving jovially.

"Oh, hi there Professor! Uh… what's up?"

"Oh not much, lad; I was just on my way to get a hearty snack when I saw that little spat you had with your girlfriend."

"She's not my-" Jaune protested, only to immediately drop the issue. "Never mind. ...would you mind keeping what you just saw a secret?"

"Never fear," the professor said, zipping his mustache shut, "no one else shall ever hear of what transpired here from my lips!"

 _He has lips?_ Jaune thought.

"Though if I may ask," he continued, "what brought on this lover's quarrel in the first place?"

Jaune ignored the "lover's quarrel" remark, opting instead to just explain, "I don't know, and that's the problem! She's been... _weird_ all day and I don't know if it's something _I_ did or if it's a personal thing she's going through or... _gah!_ " He gave the rotund teacher a pleading look, "You know?"

"My boy, I know exactly what you're going through."

"You do?"

"Of course! All youngsters go through this at some point or another, and yours truly was no exception!" He stroked his mustache proudly, "It happened on the cusp of my coming of age, when my proud mustache was but a few tiny whiskers upon my lip-"

"Uh, Professor?" Jaune held his finger, "No offense, but could you skip to the end?"

"...when the cake suddenly went _flying_ , and- Huh? Oh, of course, Mr. Arc, I'm sure you must be very busy." He cleared his throat, "Anyway, the moral of the story is 'find yourself a woman'." He explained further when a bunch of question marks started floating over Jaune's head, "And by that I mean that the best advice you can get about women should come from a woman. After all, if you want to learn how to fight an Ursa, fight an Ursa." He then did an about face, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to see a man about a glazed ham!"

As Professor Port left to enjoy his "snack" Jaune considered the elder Huntsman's words. All things considered, he didn't know that many women. Team RWBY was off somewhere doing something and he had no idea where they were, and he didn't really feel comfortable asking an adult; Mrs. Goodwitch was kind of scary, that Crimson woman seemed like she was the kind of person to break his arm for asking something like that, and he _still_ hadn't seen Professor Peach in person, so he had no idea what she was like. Velvet would probably be about as shy as he was about this, and he wasn't actually on speaking terms with Coco. (He said "hi!" to her once at a special class for team leaders, but that was the extent of their relationship.)

He was very quickly running out of options.

In the end he decided to head for the cafeteria and find Ren.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Why would someone just leave a stack of pancakes out?" Nora asked, staring the pancakes sitting in front of her. She didn't want to eat them, not just yet; there had to be a reason why someone would leave them there, and by golly she was going to figure it out before she took a bite!

Ren was just sitting there, bored, with his head propped against his arm so it didn't slide onto the table. His plan to distract Nora while Pyrrha had some alone time had worked too well, and while she was certainly distracted, _he_ didn't have anything to pass the time with. (He left his favorite book back in the room, and he was only ten pages away from finding out who the Rooster Killer was.)

"I'm sure they're fine," he drawled, "take a bite."

"Maybe there's a bug in them," the bubbly berserker mused, searching the doughy, fluffy tower with a magnifying glass. "I wouldn't want to eat a bug in _my_ pancakes…"

Ren was about to to grab a fork and take a bite of pancakes just to prove there was nothing wrong with them when he noticed Pyrrha walking over to their table, looking despondent.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"We need to talk," she said, grabbing the stoic gunner by the arm and yanking him away.

Nora was oblivious to all this, having completed her in depth analysis of the pancakes.

"Eh," she reasoned, shrugging, "they're probably fine." She grabbed a fork and sliced a wedge off the stack, spearing it and bringing it to her mouth. She was about to take a bite when-

"Nora, have you seen Ren anywhere?" Jaune asked, running up to the table.

"Pfft, _doi_!" she scoffed, gesturing to the seat across from her, "He's right- huh? Where'd he go?" She looked under the table, " _Renny, are you there? ...I guess he took off._ " She popped back up, "Whatchya need him for, anyway?"

"I wanted to ask him for advice with Pyrrha," he explained. "I just...I don't want to screw up with her. She's the most amazing girl I've ever met, and probably I'll ever meet for that matter, and I just, I just...I don't want to mess up so bad that I lose her."

"* _brrrrrrrt!_ *" went Nora as she blew her nose.

"...you OK?"

"Yep," she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve, "I just think it's just beautiful that you care so much about Pyrrha!" After taking a moment to make sure all the sniffles were out of her system, she jumped to her feet and snapped a tight salute, "Well, worry no longer; Sergeant Doctor Nora Valkyrie at your service, ready to cure you of your lady problems!"

"I don't think that's the right phrasing," Jaune intoned. "And I don't think this is a very good idea."

"Nonsense! Back home, I helped _tons_ of people with their relationship problems!" She leaned in knowingly, "Why do you think I use a heart motif on everything?" Then she grabbed his arm, "To the landing pad!"

"Why there?" he asked as she dragged him out of the cafeteria.

"Why not? It's as good a place as any. Onward!"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Could you let go of my arm?" Ren pleaded, "It's starting to hurt."

"Sorry!" Pyrrha released her teammate's arm and slowed to a stop. "Do you remember when you gave Jaune advice for asking out Weiss?"

He did, and literally the only thing he said was "And I, you"; it was Pyrrha who ended up giving their team leader the confidence to take action in the first place. (Thing ended up working out differently than intended.)

"I was in a towel," he said.

"Precisely. Well, I was perhaps..., _hoping_..., that you wouldn't mind giving _me_ some advice as well?" She clasped her hands together pleadingly, wearing an uncertain smile.

"...fine," he relented, "what's you problem?"

"I want to move things forward with Jaune," she explained, "...but this is new territory for me; I may be an expert in combat, but when I attempt to... _be romantic_ , he doesn't seem receptive. ...I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

Ren thought for a moment. "Have you tried not doing anything?"

"I...don't follow," she said, blinking.

"You don't have to try and romance him, he already likes you; just continue to be his friend and don't pressure him into doing anything he doesn't want to." He gave a wry smile, "At least, that's what my mother told me when she first thought Nora was my girlfriend."

Pyrrha thought for a moment, contemplating what her friend told her. It was worth a try at the very least, and it wasn't like being his friend had caused any lasting harm in the past.

"Thank you for the advice, Ren," she told him, "From now on I shall do my best to be Jaune's friend." She extended her hand by way of thanks.

He took it and shook firmly, "I hope it works out for you." After a moment of awkward silence he said, "Let's go find Nora, she's probably done with those pancakes and found something else to play with."

As the two of them headed off to find the ginger member of JNPR they failed to notice the pair of softly glowing amber eyes watching them from the shadows.

 _This may be easier than I thought_ , Cinder mused to herself as she headed off to find Emerald; she had a special assignment for her when the time came.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

The Bullhead carrying Crimson and RWBY touched down just as Nora dragged her team leader out onto the landing area, a disheveled looking Team RWBY stepping off the aircraft a minute later.

"Whoa," Nora gasped, "what happened to you guys?"

"Training," Crimson explained, following after them, "They messed up a pack of Beowolves."

"Define 'messed up'," Weiss groaned, holding an ice pack to her skull.

"Messed up: what we just experienced," Blake recited. She sported a black eye and her wrist was in a sling.

Ruby followed behind her, panting, "So...many...Grimm…."

"Come on guys!" Crimson protested, "That should have been easy!"

"For _you_ maybe," Yang retorted, "you're like some Super Huntress or something!"

"I know," she said, grinning.

"So what are you guys doing here?" Ruby asked, finally registering her friends' presence.

"It's private," Nora said immediately, throwing her hand over Jaune mouth, "Official Team JNPR business only!" She shooed the returning team (and friend) off the platform, "You can have your turn when we're done with it."

RWBY and Crimson left one half of JNPR to their devices, heading back to their room to recover from their "training".

"See you guys later," Crimson waved, "I'm gonna go check out my room." She turned to leave, then squeaked in surprise when she saw her younger self suddenly standing in front of her in a shallow layer of rose petals.

"Do you wanna spend the night in our room?" she asked, "It'll be like a sleepover; we could paint our nails, and try on clothes, and talk about cute boys and it'll be fun!"

"Why is that always people's first response?" Yang wondered.

A wave of nostalgia washed over Crimson. She remembered Weiss sarcastically suggesting that on the first day at Beacon, and then later when Penny eagerly suggested it when they first met.

It brought to light exactly how long it had been since she was actually able to _relax,_ which she couldn't even remember having a moment like that in recent memory.

"Actually," she said, rubbing her chin, "I think I'd like that; burnt out buildings and the constant threat of death don't really make for a fun 'girls night'."

"Then it's settled!" Ruby cheered, morphing from "excited" to "business mode" in the blink of an eye, "Tonight, we shall have the _greatest_ sleepover party Remnant has ever seen! There will be snacks, there will be pillow fights, _there will be blood_!"

"We will _not_ have blood," Weiss said, putting her foot down on the matter.

"Seconded!" agreed Crimson, raising her finger.

"Can we at least play Spin The Bottle?" Yang asked.

Once again, Blake had to fight to keep her face from reddening. "I'd rather play Remnant: The Game again."

"Oh? You got something to hide there, Blakey?" Yang raised her eyebrow conspiratorially, leaning in towards her partner, "Maybe concerning a certain sandy haired Faunus with a tail?"

"I refuse to answer that," she said, blushing even more.

"Actually…," Crimson pulled Yang close and hugged her tightly by the shoulder. "R:TG sounds great; I've been meaning to play my sister again for some time." She had that evil grin she tended to get when she was scheming something.

Yang gulped. Loudly.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Pyrrha surveyed her handiwork as she laid the finishing touches on the makeshift table she had set up. It wasn't much, just some disposable plates and utensils and some cake she got from the cafeteria. (It was a pretty good looking cake too, all things considered; she had to give props to the Beacon culinary staff.) However, it didn't need to look good to serve its purpose.

She hoped Jaune would get the message she was trying to convey. It _really_ wasn't his fault that any of this was happening, and she wanted him to know that. With any luck she could explain that to him in a way that wouldn't make things worse. (Ren had graciously volunteered to keep Nora busy until later that night, so there wouldn't be any interruptions.)

...she was so nervous right now.

There was a knock on the door.

" _Pyrrha, you in there? Ren said you wanted to talk with me?"_

She took a deep breath, smoothing down her blazer as she went over to the door, grasping the handle. She offered up one last silent prayer before letting Jaune into the room.

"...Hello again," she said, giving a small wave. She gestured to the set up, "I got some cake."

"Oh. Uh, cool." He shuffled into the room, taking one of the chairs that were set up. "Sooooo...what did you want to talk about?"

She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "I wanted to apologize for earlier, both on the balcony and in the hallway. I assumed things that I shouldn't have and let my emotions get the better of me."

"Pyrrha, I think-"

"Please let me finish," she held up her hand, "I want you to know that I greatly value our friendship, and I don't want to do anything to damage it. So I promise that from now on I'll do my best to be sensitive to your feelings and to not pressure you into something you're not ready for." She let out another breath, this one full of relief and satisfaction, "Now, what were you going to say?"

Jayne gaped at his female partner. "Uh, I was going to say pretty much the same thing," he said, "Nora explained some things to me and I guess I'm still kind of oblivious about certain things, so I was going to tell you that I'd be more aware from now on. ...she also mentioned sloths at some point."

"Well, I'd be surprised if she didn't." They both shared a knowing chuckle, and Pyrrha held out her hand. "Then shall we both endeavor to be better friends with each other?"

"Sounds good to me," Jaune said, shaking the proffered hand firmly. "...can we eat the cake now."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

" _Nooooooo…!_ " Yang wailed, drooping over in defeat as Crimson sat smugly across from her sister.

"Yes!" she cheered, "I finally did it: Yang Xiao-Long, you have been defeated!"

"You monster!" the blonde shouted, rivers of tears streaming down her face. "Have you no sympathy?"

"None whatsoever!" Crimson chuckled gleefully, knocking over each of Yang's miniatures one by one, "You literally have _no_ idea how good this feels for me!"

"I kinda do," Ruby muttered from her bed. She and Weiss had joined the game initially, but were summarily demolished before either had a chance to blink. Then they'd joined Blake on Weiss's bunk, the Faunus having chosen not to partake in the needlessly complicated and unbalanced board game.

"Don't worry," the Crimson said, reaching over to pat her younger self comfortingly on the shoulder, "I'm sticking around for a while, so there's plenty of time for me to train you properly."

"Which doesn't help with the training Vytal Festival tournament you promised," Weiss reminded the older version of her partner, "And no, that tasteless practical joke you pulled in the Snowy Forest was _nothing_ like proper training!"

"You all survived!" she protested, "If anything, I feel sorry for all those Beowolves you messed up."

"I don't think you know what that phrase means," quipped Blake, holding her waist where a bruise from the fight lingered.

Zwei whimpered, feeling sympathy for the Faunus. He would have gone over to comfort her, but she didn't seem to like him very much, and also because Ruby #2 held him tightly in her lap and wouldn't let go, doing everything with only one hand.

"Why don't we turn in for the night?" Ruby suggested, "I think we've had all the fun we can have for one evening."

"Sounds good to me," Yang sobbed, climbing up to her bunk, "Maybe when I wake up tomorrow this will all be a horrible nightmare…." She sighed dejectedly as she crawled under her covers, " _I can't believe my little sister beat me at my best game…_ "

"I think I'm going to turn in as well," Weiss announced, "I plan on _actually_ _training_ for the tournament."

Blake shrugged, going over to her own bed. "I'm just tired," she said.

"Aw! We didn't even get to the pillow fight!" Crimson protested, folding her arms as she pouted.

"Knowing _you_ , that would probably end with the four of us in traction." Weiss gave the older woman a smack upside the head, now wearing her nightgown. "Get some rest."

"Fine, whatever." Crimson rubbed her head where it was smacked, "Just know, that I will _not_ forget this offense against your leader…!" She scratched Zwei behind his ears, "Whadaya say, Boy; wanna keep an old soldier girl company a while longer?"

The dark furred Corgi yawned in response.

"Fine," she relented, "I can take a hint." She grabbed the sleeping bag from the end of Yang and Blake's bunk (It was Yang's bag, by the way, seeing as it was the only one that remotely fit Crimson's more mature form.) and climbed inside, sans dog. "Good night, girls," she said, "sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

"Ooh, you promise?" Weiss snarked. "Maybe we could find a nest of Deathstalkers to poke with a stick!"

"Love you too, Honey Buns!" Crimson retorted, shooting Weiss the bird as she rolled over on her side, away from the heiress. Weiss humphed and plopped on her own bed.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _So fair warning, chapters are going to be posted less frequently after this and the next two due to the story getting to the end of the material I have written so far. Rest assured I'll still continue to add more to the Master Document until I have a complete story, I have no intention whatsoever of giving up on this one._

 _As you can probably tell, I have something in the works involving Pyrrha and Cinder. If you'll recall, in Volume 2, Cinder, Mercury and Emerald discuss possible candidates for something Cinder has planned, with Pyrrha's name being on the list. Since it wasn't been touched on again, fanfic writers like me essentially have free reign to do as we please with that thread, at least until Volume 3 starts coming out. I can't really reveal my plans for it, but let's just say that Anarchy is a largely contributing factor in where it's ultimately headed._

 _Speaking of Volume 3, it turns out that I'll probably have enough of a base established with this story to keep up with it as it comes out and not be influenced too much outside of my own plans. That said, I do hope that Volume 3 answers some lingering questions left over from the first two volumes (like what Winter Schnee looks like, for instance), since that will ultimately give me more things to play with in the future for other stories._

 _I'm also going to stop pointing out the differences between Sins and Remnant's Reclaimer unless something comes up directly, since there's enough story here now for people to draw that conclusion on their own. (Slight spoilers, a couple tertiary characters that were included in Remnant's Reclaimer will eventually make an appearance and have a small impact on the story.)_

 _Also, as of the posting of this chapter, "The Morning After pts 1 & 2" have had some much needed clean up editing done to them, getting rid of those pesky typos and adding some more flare to the odd line of two. I will have cleaner versions of "Once more back to Beacon" and "A glimpse forward" up before too long. _

_And for those still wondering about that second reference (no one managed to guess it), it's the serial number that Crimson gives Glynda; 6221981, or July 22, 1891, Monty Oum's date of birth._


	7. 62 percent

**A/N at the bottom.**

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _Yang was in the weird, off color version of the school courtyard, with the oddly familiar woman (who was_ totally _stealing her hair style!) standing across from her. She wasn't wearing her Grimm mask this time, letting the blonde get a good look at her face._

 _...and it looked pretty much exactly like hers did, right down to the red pupils in her eyes._

" _Why do you look like me?" Yang asked, though demanded would be a more accurate word, "And where the Hell are we?"_

 _The woman smiled coyly, "Why Yang, you don't recognize your own school?"_

" _My school doesn't have a purple sky," she explained, nodding to the expanse above them. She felt eye hers suddenly turn red, "Now start answering my questions before I start punching your face!"_

" _You haven't changed a bit," the raven woman tsked, "always so impulsive; never stopping to smell the flowers, or look at the big picture..."_

 _Yang growled._

 _The woman sighed, "Very well, in the spirit of getting things moving..." The two women were suddenly standing atop the spire of Beacon's clock tower, looking down. "Tell me what you see."_

 _Yang groaned and looked down at the campus below them, (What "How did they get up there so fast"?) gasping when she saw nothing but a void, the bottom of the tower dissolving into the ether._

" _What the…?"_

" _This is all in your mind," the woman explained, "more specifically, this is a dream."_

" _...huh." Yang glanced back at the woman, "So then what are you supposed to be, my subconscious?"_

 _The woman's playful and coy demeanor suddenly fell away, replaced with a look of hurt and sadness. "No," she said, "I very much exist in the real word too; this place here is something of a hub for the subconscious, a place where people can communicate on a level beyond the physical."_

" _OK," Yang said, "but why go through all this trouble; wouldn't the CCT work just as well?"_

" _It's too easily hacked," she explained, "With this, only the people transmitting and receiving can communicate with each other. And since virtually no one on the entire planet knows how to do this anymore, we can talk with complete-"_

" _Hang on!" Yang interrupted. They were now standing in Ozpin's office. "That's cool and everything, but that still doesn't tell me who you are."_

" _You already know who I am," the woman told her, "you just need to remember."_

 _Now they were on the train the White Fang used for the Breach, in the car Yang where fought Short Stuff, with some sort of red colored portal on one side._

" _I saw you when I was here," Yang realized, "when I was fighting that short bitch."_

"' _Neopolitan'," the woman corrected, "but you knew me from before this." The scene changed again, this time to a decrepit, ruined house in the middle of a wood. "In fact, you've known me for most of your life."_

 _Yang struggled to remember farther back, to her childhood. Most of it was a blur, just disjointed images and vague recollections of people or things that made an impact: Ruby, her dad, Summer, the day Zwei first came to live with them, her mothe-_

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 **Well would you look at that, another dream sequence. Too bad Yang obviously woke up before she could have her epiphany...**

 **Yes, I'm building up to something with these, though I'll probably only do one more before I kill the gimmick.**

 **Not much to say here, it was a short chapter. The next one should be longer.**


	8. A painful reminder

**A/N at the bottom.**

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _She was panting heavily, the ground around her littered with the broken limbs and frames of what used to be a platoon of deathbots. Not because they were anywhere near the Tower, the squad was all the way in the ruins of Beacon. No, she just wanted to kill some things, she didn't really care what. Sure, she could have just slaughter some of the Grimm that hung around the Tower, but that had lost it's charm so long ago that it almost wasn't even worth going through the motions for; she'd gotten too powerful for the soulless creatures to pose a challenge for her, much less any sort of credible threat. Hell, the Creatures of Grimm actually hid from_ her _she was so powerful!_

" _Area clear," she called out, waving for the rest of her team over to her position. The three other soldiers all crept out from behind their cover._

" _A-a-are you s-sure?" one of the soldiers asked, a petite, platinum blonde woman with a perpetual stutter, "Th-th-there could b-be Clickers hiding in th-the rubble."_

" _Don't worry," the battle hardened woman assured her subordinate, "the Longshooters would get you before the Clickers could even prime their fuses."_

" _Don't worry," the other soldier said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, "I can take out the Longshooters before they shoot us."_

 _The petite soldier smiled shakily, "T-thanks, Arryn."_

" _Please!" a third soldier scoffed, "You say that to_ every _pretty girl you come across." She then gave the second soldier, Arryn, a hearty pat on the back, "You don't have to pretend to be this badass sniper to get some action; you're plenty sexy as it is, just be a man and ask someone directly!"_

" _Barb," Arryn admonished tiredly, "just because I'm bisexual, doesn't mean I want to have sex with every attractive person I see. Besides, Kara already has a boyfriend, and I'm not going to get between them just for a cheap lay. Also,_ I am _a badass sniper, unlike_ you _, who needs to use a shotgun just to hit anything."_

" _...y-you think I'm attractive?" Kara wondered._

" _You kidding? You're_ adorable _!" Barb praised, "If I were gay or Bi, you'd be on the floor_ so fast _!..." Kara blushed, unable to look Barb in the eye._

 _Ruby stood back, letting the three women rib each other (though Kara was shaking her head a lot). It was kind of nice, watching her team bicker and argue with each other. ...but only for a minute or two at most, otherwise thoughts of Blake and Yang would worm their way into her mind and eat at her until she inevitably lost herself in a bottle of liquor._

 _Her demons already did that well enough on their own, they didn't need any help with the job._

" _Cut the chatter," she said, folding up Crescent Rose on her belt, "let's look around while we're here, see if there's still anything worth taking back with us."_

" _Yes Ma'am," Arryn saluted, shaking Barb off of her, "Anything specific we should look out for?"_

" _Dust, ammo, any preserved foods," she listed off, "If you find any bodies, try to find out who they were so we can add their names to the Wall." The three women nodded and headed into the ruined building._

 _Ruby stayed outside, staring at the ruined building longingly; she remembered the building back in its prime, when the tower still stood tall against the sky like a needle and the campus teemed with life, students going to and fro and just the_ life _that used to inhabit it before D-day happened…_

 _So many lives just snuffed out in an instant: Ozpin, Cardin, Velvet, that one boy that got a bit too excited in Professor Port's class on her first day at Beacon..._

 _She didn't know how long she lost herself in her memories when the roaring of a Grimm finally registered, her body moving ahead of her brain as it ran towards the sounds of battle. The abandoned corridors of the the place she once called home flying past with barely a glance paid, her only thoughts now being "Grimm" and "eradicate"._

 _Eventually she made her way to what used to be the assembly hall, now just an empty space with no ceiling. The floor was littered with bones, 85% of them human (the other 15% were Faunus)._

 _And right in the middle, with Kara pinned under one its massive forelegs, was the Grimm; a Lesser Wyrm, one of the most dangerous Grimm on the whole planet. It was extremely rare, and stories of it usually ended with lots of blood._

 _Barb and Arryn were slumped over against the remains of the podium, neither was moving._

 _Kara stared up in fright at the monster, screaming wordlessly in fright at the monster bearing down on her._

 _Ruby acted on instinct, shifting Crescent Rose to its scythe form and leaping at the legendary Grimm, aiming right for its neck. The Wyrm lifted its bony head just as the deadly weapon was about to land, causing it to strike its impenetrable skull. She quickly leaped back, avoiding a swipe from the monster's fearsome claws. It swiped at her again, and she only barely managed to block it before ending up like her squad, or worse._

" _I'm not gonna be such an easy meal," she said through gritted teeth, "you're gonna have to work for this shit." She shoved the claw away, quickly shifting Crescent Rose to its rifle form and began unloading rounds into the Grimm as she ran along the wall to get an advantage over the beast._

 _The Grimm didn't like that very much, despite the fact that her shots were doing negligible damage at best, and it decided to start spitting acid at her._

 _She let a bit of her Aura flare, just enough to prevent the acid from burning her skin. She usually relied on her own physical prowess in battle, since those damn Seeker/Killer drones were equipped with the most sophisticated Aura monitoring package possible (thanks to some crack shooting by Arryn and her fellow snipers they'd managed to capture one for the scientists of Dead Fantasy to study). Otherwise it was dangerous to use too much Aura if you weren't already in the middle of pitched battle. Through intense training a little bit of experimentation Ruby had been able to compress her Aura so that it was barely able to be read at all by machines._

 _Though by now the Wyrm had probably caused enough commotion to draw their attention anyway...shit…._

 _The Wyrm spat more acid at her, and this time she dodged before it hit her, using her Semblance to help her leap over the spit. She ripped off the remainder of her cape, some of the acid having splashed on it; now all she had left was her hood, somehow being mercifully spared the way too deep clean._

 _On her way down she swung Crescent Rose again, predictable being blocked by the creature's bony head. It swiped at her, catching the reaper in her side and flinging her into the wall._

 _She winced as she felt a pole or something sticking into her side; she grunted as she tried to stand back up, but couldn't when waves of pain shot through her. If she had to guess, she was probably short one lung, probably a rib or two as well all things considered._

 _And to make matters worse, the Wyrm was stalking its way over to her._

" **How does it feel?"** _the Wyrm asked, its voice oddly feminine,_ " **Letting your Team die?"**

" _Fuck you, you cockbiting fucktard!" she grit out, failing once again to stand up, "I didn't let anybody die!"_

 _The Grimm cocked its head to the side,_ " **Those limp bodies over there beg to differ."** _It made a sound that was probably chuckling,_ " **So...that would make** _ **you**_ **a** _ **Team killing**_ _**fucktard**_ **, right?"**

 _She looked over at her team; Barb and Arryn were still slumped over each other, and Kara was still laying on the floor, still conscious but frozen in fear and shaking violently._

" **You could have saved them,"** _it continued,_ " **but you didn't, because you're a** _ **fucking inept Team killing fucktard bitch!**_ " _Fire started to lick around its maw as the accusations got more and more biting._ " _ **You were**_ **clearly** _**stronger than them, you could have scouted the building before they went in, you idiot! You're a disgrace, you couldn't even save your**_ **dog** _ **, let alone people under your command! You think you're hot shit?"**_

 _The Wyrm then opened its mouth, a fireball slowly gathering._

" **Because if you** _ **are**_ **hot shit, then you should be burning a lot more right now!"** _The fireball shot right and Ruby's face, consuming her vision until all she could see was light and red and heat and black and pain and pain and pain pain pain_ _ **pain pain pain PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN-**_

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 **And welcome to one of _many_ nightmares brought to you buy our very own Crimson. These will serve as glimpses in the future, for all intents and purposes. **

**Now you might be thinking that three women in Crimson's squad seem familiar, and that's because pay attention to the RWBY ending credits. Once you've done that, you'll be able to appreciate the delicious, darkly poetic irony. ...and then have yourself a Vincent Price style cackle.**

 **The Grimm in this chapter is heavily based on the dragons in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Not nearly as titanic as, say, Grima from Fire Emblem: Awakening, but still large enough that you don't want to be in the same general area as it. (Fun fact, this was supposed to be one of the _smaller_ examples of the breed.) **

**And while I've got your attention, I'd just like to point out Dragon Ball Z, Steins;Gate, Terminator, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Star Trek, Stargate, Eureka, 12 Monkeys, the Pendragon books, Heroes, Back to the Future, Doctor Who, Futurama, Time Warp Trio, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Time Machine, Time Cop, and of course, Red vs. Blue. This is every series I could think of off the top of my head that was about or had an element of time travel in it; now you guys don't have to make any comparisons! **

**And don't worry, next chapter we'll be coming back to reality.**


	9. All's Fair

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Crimson awoke screaming with a start, flinging Zwei off of her. (The malleable mutt had decided during the night that the second Ruby made a comfortable pillow.) She had a knife and one of her pistols out and pointed at the door, ready to kill at a moment's notice.

"What the-!" Yang snapped awake as well, quickly followed by the rest of the team. It took her a moment for her heart to calm down. "...Crimson?" she said, looking at the older version of her sister curiously; she had her weapons out, she was breathing hard, and she was sweating profusely, "You have a bad dream or something?"

Yang's question was lost on the soldier from the future, the woman currently in a state of hyper focus.

"Is she...alright?" Ruby asked hesitantly.

Zwei, after shaking off his rude wake up call, trotted back over to Ruby #2 and started cuddling on her lap, nuzzling her side with his head.

This managed to get Crimson's attention.

"I'm OK," she breathed, slowly and deliberately putting her gun back in its holster and reaching down to scratch Zwei behind his ears, "sorry about that, boy."

"What was all that about?" Weiss asked, to which Crimson silently held up her pointer finger (on the same hand she was holding the knife with).

"Let's give her a minute," Ruby suggested, crawling out of her bunk.

Blake followed suit, gingerly navigating around the older woman. "We'll meet you in the cafeteria, OK?" she said as she grabbed her uniform.

Crimson nodded mutely, continuing to pet Zwei as the girls left to get changed.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Soooooo...," Nora asked as JNPR sat down to breakfast, leaning on the table with her elbows, "how'd it go last night?"

"It went...fine?" Jaune said, not quite sure why the bubbly berserker grinning knowingly at him, "We talked for a bit, we had some cake, and we went to bed."

"Precisely," Pyrrha confirmed, "We had a meaningful discussion over some cake and then bid each other goodnight." She then took bite from her muffin.

"Why do you ask?" Jaune asked, muffle by the oversized scoop of Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes he was chewing, "And where were you guys? I don't remember you coming back before we fell asleep."

"We spent the evening in the library," Ren explained before Nora could embellish anything, "I was finally able to catch up on 'Ten Little Roosters'."

"They had a _Mogar_ section!" Nora squealed, bouncing excitedly in her seat.

"It was five issues of the comics," Ren deadpanned.

"Five _awesome_ issues!" she corrected.

"...did they have any more issues of X-Ray & Vav?" Jaune asked.

Ren held up his hand before his leader and his childhood friend could get into another argument over their prefered comic books, "So are the two of you going to be OK with each other now?"

"I believe we are," the Mistrali athlete nodded. She smiled and took another bite of her muffin, chewing thoughtfully.

"Are you _sure_ you didn't do anything else last night?" Nora pressed, "You know, maybe a little…." She puckered her lips and made smooching sounds, fluttering her eyelashes.

Jaune and Pyrrha both blushed slightly.

"Nora…"

"Oh come on, Ren, you wanna know too!"

"Even if they did what you're unsubtly hinting, they're under no obligation to share that information with us." He glanced over at the resident couple (of friends), "Are you two going to continue your private lessons?"

"Actually, I think we should do some training as a full team," the blond knight suggested, both because he actually wanted to bring it up and because he _didn't_ want to give Nora any more fodder for her "goddess of love" schtick, "you know, since the tournament is going to start in a few days."

" _Sounds fun, mind if we join?"_

The group turn around and saw two of the students from Haven Academy, the green and silver haired girl and boy who sat in on Pyrrha's exhibition with CRDL specifically, both in their uniforms; the girl waved cordially while the boy was filing his nails, looking quite indifferent to everything.

"You want to...join our training?" Jaune wondered. He wasn't necessarily opposed to the exchange students joining them, he just wasn't really expecting it. "You don't want to train with your own team?"

"Eh," the boy shrugged, "they're probably off somewhere secluded making out. It wouldn't surprise me if they eventually turned up wearing each other's shirts- Hey! What the hell, Em?"

"Ignore Mercury's _non-existent_ humor," she said after she slapped Mercury in the chest, "we just wanted to make some new friend while we're here." She held out her hand, "The name's Emerald Sustrai, and the _idiot_ is Mercury Black."

"Hi," he waved lazily.

"A pleasure seeing you again." Pyrrha accepted the proffered hand, giving it a firm shake and nodded to Mercury and Emerald in turn.

Nora suddenly shot her hand into the air like she was in class, "Question! You know these guys?"

"They were in the class where I fought Team CRDL," the red headed Spartan explained to her teammates.

"Yeah, we had a really awesome fight," Mercury added, "kinda the stuff of legends."

"You forfeited the match," she clarified, trying to keep her frustration over the unfinished match out of her voice, "hardly 'legendary' by any definition."

Mercury just shrugged dismissively, prompting Pyrrha to scowl at him.

"We were thinking of hanging out at the Vytal Festival for a while," Emerald said, "you know, take in a bit of culture before we sweat our butts off. How's that sound to you guys?"

"I was under the impression that the festivities were put on hold for the moment," Ren said, "what with the whole Breach incident and everything."

Emerald shrugged, "I'm pretty sure everything by the docks is still set up; the Breach was more inland, wasn't it?"

"Right by the center of town, if memory serves," Mercury helpfully pointed out, now back to filing his nails again, "no reason why any of them should have closed down."

"I vote we go do that!" Nora shouted, once again raising her hand. She turned to Ren and said, in a normal voice, "Do you think the 'pancakes on a stick' guy will still be here?"

"That's...a thing?" Emerald wondered, to which Nora nodded emphatically. Ren also raised his hand.

Jaune still look uncertain. "I don't know, it doesn't really sound like we'll get much training in for the tournament-"

"Aw, don't worry about it!" Emerald sidled up next to the scraggly team leader and wrap her arm around his shoulders, "I'm sure we'll able to think of something once we get there; no rule says we can't train and have fun at the same time, right?" She waggled her eyebrows for extra effect.

Pyrrha bristled with jealousy when she saw the Haven student get so close to Jaune. She couldn't explain it, she just did. It wasn't like she'd already spent so much time and effort building a relationship with the boy that was just beginning to show fruits but was in a delicate position that could potentially be toppled with the right prodding, not at all! Sure, Emerald might have been good looking in that classic, Bronzed Goddess kind of way that Pyrrha couldn't pull off half as well, and she seemed like a genuinely nice person, and she was probably a really good fighter if she was here for the Festival, and-

 _There's nothing to worry about,_ the spartan chided herself, _she's just being friendly; I'm needlessly jumping to conclusions._

"I think Miss Sustrai makes a valid point," Pyrrha said, raising her hand along with Nora and trying her hardest not to grit her teeth, "I vote we attend the festival; between the six of us I'm sure we can come up with something."

"Woohoo, teamwork...," Mercury cheered halfheartedly. "Sounds _thrilling_!"

Emerald rolled her eyes, "Ignore him, he votes yes."

Jaune sighed, "OK, let's all go to the Festival."

"Yay!" Nora cheered, "Pancakes on a Stick, here we come!"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

While JNPR was making new friends, Team RWBY was waiting for Crimson to make her way down from their room.

"I hope she's OK," Ruby said, despondent, "She looked _really_ miserable."

"She sorta reminded me of _you_ way back when," Yang gestured to her sister, "when you used to stay in my room whenever there was a thunderstorm, and-"

"You promised you wouldn't tell anyone about that!" the crimsonette shrieked, tackling Yang over the table in an effort shut up about her childhood and kicking up a cloud of dust with the ensuing fight.

"She does realize that they're technically the same person, right?" Weiss asked Blake, who was nibbling on a piece of toast.

She just shrugged, taking another bite of the piece of artificially dried out bread. (With butter, of course.)

A few seconds later Crimson trudged over to their table, with Zwei following at her heels.

"Hey girls," she said tiredly, plopping down next to Weiss, "working hard?"

"No, we're not working at all," Weiss said, pointing at the dueling sisters, "Does _this_ look like working to you?"

"I'm fine, Weiss, thanks for asking!" the older woman retorted, grinning cheesily reaction, "How are you?"

"We should be asking you that," Blake pointed out, "you looked like a-" She cut herself off when she realized what she was going to say. "...you know."

"Like a frightened cat," she correctly guessed, "yeah, I know." She sighed, "I might as well tell you guys, since we're already on the subject. You see, I kinda suffer from nightmares on account of the last decade or so of my life being total shit. And last night, well...let's just say that there's some stuff I blame myself for."

"...what kind of stuff?" Weiss asked delicately.

"People I've had to watch die," Crimson said, "not something I really want to be thinking about…."

Blake swallowed her toast heavily. "I can imagine," she said, somberly. She definitely knew what the pain of loss felt like, another symptom of her time in the White Fang. "You don't have to talk about it if it's too painful."

"Thanks." She nodded, taking a long gulp from her flask.

By this point Ruby and Yang had stopped their slap fight and were listening intently. (This was somewhat undercut by the fact that Yang still had her sister in a headlock.)

"I don't know about all of you," she continued, "but I could certainly use a palette cleanser after that harrowing experience; who's up for having some fun at the Vytal Festival?"

"Pass," Weiss said immediately, "I did mention I was going to use today to prepare for the tournament, did I not?"

"Oh come on, Weiss, it's the _Vytal Festival_!" Yang exclaimed, "And weren't you raving about all the _boring_ things you loved about it a while back?"

"They are _not_ boring!" protested Weiss, hands on her hips, "I just happen to appreciate all the effort that goes into such a grand event!"

"No offense, but planning and logistics don't sound all that fun," Ruby groaned.

"I concur!" Crimson held up her flask in agreement.

"Why am I not surprised?" Weiss rubbed her forehead.

"I guess I wouldn't mind exploring the Festival," Blake mused, "as long as it's only for an hour or two."

"I suppose that's fair," Crimson shrugged, "Hell, I'll probably be back to normal after only one hour. So if there are no objections…," she paused for a moment, receiving no objections, "...then what do you gals want to do the most? It's not like I've been in years, so I'm fine with whatever you suggest."

"Whatever we do, we _have_ to see if the 'Pancakes on a Stick' guy comes back this year!" Yang adamantly declared. "Those were _awesome_!"

"Not as good as the deep fried cookies were," Ruby countered dreamily, her eyes morphing into a pair of chocolate chip cookies. (She was also drooling a little.)

"Both of those things supremely unhealthy," said Weiss dryly. "If we're going to do anything while there, then we need to visit the concert pavilion; I hear there's going to be a symphony of classic Mistrali pieces."

"Sounds boring," Yang scoffed, "Give me the Achieve Men any day!"

"I'd rather go see the live reenactment of 'Descent of the Mad King'," Blake interjected.

"Aw, but cookies-!"

"You all could use some culture-"

"'Descent' is a well crafted and tragic-"

"Pancakes on a Stick-"

"Girls, girls!" Crimson admonished, "If we work things right we can do everything you suggested, so long as you don't mind walking around with food."

"All part of the experience," Yang said, spreading her arms wide.

The older woman turned to Weiss, "You OK with a compromise, Princess?"

" _I'm not a princess_ ," Weiss said through gritted teeth. "...but yes, I'm fine with that."

"Then it's settled!" Crimson clapped her hands, rubbing them together. Then she snapped her fingers, "Wait, I almost forgot!" She scratched Zwei behind his ears, "Got anything you wanna try, boy?"

"*bark!*," Zwei yipped.

"...Maybe, I'll see what I can do."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

There were many advantages to not talking that people rarely thought about. For example, on the _extreme_ off chance you were actually caught by the police, you would never give them anything to use against you. However, this was a slippery slope because it was considerably harder to defend yourself; it definitely paid to have a crooked lawyer on speed dial.

Another benefit was that you were naturally more stealthy. It was surprising how many people would talk to themselves when they thought no one else was listening, which would often lead to them being found out if they were trying (and failing) to be stealthy. If you never made a habit of speaking then you wouldn't end up accidentally exclaiming something when you were trying to follow that stupid Cinder through a dense crowd humans and Faunus.

Neo was getting a lot of use out of the second benefit.

She was wandering the Festival grounds in an effort to find a suitable ice cream treat (she'd heard that places like these often had many different unique confectioneries) when she saw the stupid woman milling about. She was looking over some stall or other (Neo didn't really care, the contents weren't ice cream related), making a show of being indecisive.

Neo wanted to gag, it was so hammy.

She walked up to another stall a few spaces down from Cinder's (it also didn't have anything to do with ice cream) and also pretended to take in its wears, subtly glancing over at her former boss.

Neo never liked working for Cinder from the get go; the woman was too secretive for her own good, not to mention it was _annoying_ when she would never actually answer any of Roman's questions, always being coy with her 'need to know basis' shtick. The Wonder Twins weren't much better, with Emerald being passive aggressive and that Mercury prick calling her "Roman's pet".

Which was _SO_ not true on a number of levels!...

Of course, right as she thought that, the eponymous duo showed up with a group of Beacon students. She didn't recognize them, but at a glance they seemed like the kind of people she and Roman would have suckered out of their lunch money; why they would be hanging out with the crooks, she couldn't fathom. They exchanged pleasantries, _stupid_ _Cinder_ fawning over the red head with the pony tail before the seven of them headed off to one of the larger tents. Neo followed, weaving through the crowd to keep the group in sight.

It was odd, watching _Cinder_ act like a schoolgirl; she was a lot less intimidating than she normally was around the Fang, all carefree and outgoing...it was kind of scary, actually.

She also noticed how Emerald was staying abnormally close to the scraggly blond boy. She knew the rumors that floated around the "employees", about how _stupid_ _Cinder_ and the Twins spent a lot of time behind closed doors with each other, so why would she be getting close to someone else? And to... _him_ of all people? Sure, he was cute in that Adorkable kind of way, but not anywhere near attractive looking.

She preferred her men more slick and dashing.

And with better fashion sense.

And was always willing to share ice cream with her.

And would read her bedtime stories every other Thursday.

... _gawd_ she missed Roman!

She shook those thoughts from her head for the moment and refocused on _stupid Cinder_ and her new friends. In the few seconds she was distracted the ginger girl with bobby hair must have done something, because she was being dragged by the ear by the stoic boy in green, with Emerald wiping something off of Scraggly's shirt and Ponytail looking like she was about to pop a gasket.

Mercury just stood to the side, letting all this play out.

...prick.

She followed them inside the tent, ignoring whatever the contents were because A. it wasn't ice cream, and B. keeping an eye on _stupid Cinder_ was more important at this time.

But once she was done with that she was going to find herself some ice cream, and then she was going to work on getting Roman out of jail.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Inside the tent was a veritable jungle consisting of many of the various flora from all over Remnant; from the crimson trees of the Forest of Forever Fall to the different cacti from Vacuo to smaller versions the giant pines from Mistral and many, many others.

"Holy crap, that's a lot of plants," Nora marveled, looking wide eyed at all the plants on display.

"I believe there are supposed flora samples from every habitable region on the planet," Cinder explained, "quite impressive when you think about it."

"This was my favorite shirt…," Jaune moaned, morosely examining the stain on his garment. Nora had accidentally spilled her Pancakes on a Stick on him, and none of them knew a good remedy to remove syrup from clothing.

"I said I was sorry!" she said, "That pebble just came out of nowhere! I think Ren might have damaged my delicate hearing…."

"That may have been a bit harsh on my part," he admitted.

"I thought it was pretty funny," Mercury shrugged, earning him a slap to the shoulder by his partner.

"Do you always have to be such an ass?" she asked, futilely trying to clean Jaune's shirt.

"Only on days ending in Y," he retorted.

"You could borrow my jacket if you want," Ren offered.

Jaune shook his head, "Thanks, but It's not really that bad-"

"Oh come on!" Emerald abandoned her scrubbing for trying to pull Jaune's hoodie off of the ("Ack!") boy, "Just wear the jacket!"

"Miss Sustrai!" Pyrrha gasped, shocked by how brazen the Haven student was being. "W-w-w-what are you doing?!"

"What? He needs to wear _something_!" she said, finally yanking the garment off of the young knight.

...leaving him shirtless, much to the embarrassment of both Jaune and Pyrrha.

Ren sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, Nora looked nonplussed, Mercury didn't care, and Cinder raised an eyebrow, taking in the spectacle.

"Woo!" Emerald whistled, "Not bad, Jauney boy! You work out?"

"N-not really…," he stammered, crossing his arms over his chest, "Um, Ren? I'll take that jacket now."

Ren took off his jacket and was about to hand it to Jaune when the dark skinned Haven girl put up her arm to stop him.

"Don't be so hasty," she said, grinning eagerly, "I want to get a good look at this…!~" She eyed Jaune's admittedly toned and defined musculature, "I'm surprised this guy doesn't have a girlfriend yet."

Pyrrha blushed.

"I might just have to snatch him up-"

"Here." Ren tossed his jacket to Jaune, who caught it awkwardly and hastily put it on.

Mercury grabbed Emerald by her collar. "Easy back there, Hotpants," he said, pulling her away from a neon red (and green robed) Jaune, "you're gonna give the poor boy an aneurysm."

While Mercury and Emerald bickered, Pyrrha tapped Jaune on the shoulder after he was properly shod again. "Are you alright, Jaune?" she asked.

"Yeah," he sighed, "I'm sorta used to that."

"... _why_?" she wondered, somewhat feared what the answer might be.

"My sisters used to take me clothes shopping when I was young," he explained, rubbing the back of his head, "and sometimes they got _really_ excited when they saw how cute I looked…"

"Whah-chh!" Mercury said, pantomiming a whip cracking.

" _Excuse me."_

The group turned around to find a man in coveralls and a spray bottle standing behind them, tapping his foot.

"Sorry to bother you kids," he said, "but I have to ask you to leave on account of your friend there." He gestured to Jaune with his bottle, "The sign out front says 'no shirt, no shoes, no entry' in nice, bold letters."

"Why's that?" Nora wondered.

"Because some of the plants here are poisonous, like that melon from the Forest of Forever Fall you're about to swipe even though I can clearly see you doing it." Nora quickly withdrew her hand from the fruit, lest she get a rash on her hand, or something worse.

"We're sorry about that," Cinder apologized for the group, subtly motioning for them to start making for the exit, "we'll just get out of your way now." She briefly bowed and turned to follow the rest.

Once outside the tent Ren asked "So what now?"

"We're new here," Emerald pointed out, shrugging, "we'll follow you guys' lead."

"There's a brochure in the left pocket," Ren said to Jaune, gesturing to his borrowed jacket.

"Where'd you get it?" Jaune asked as he dug around in the coat.

"They were handing them out when we got off the airship."

"Whatsit say?" Nora asked, poking her head over Jaune's shoulder.

Jaune squinted at the brochure, "It looks like there's an amphitheater set up on the docks. Maybe we could go see a show?"

"Oh my gawd!" Emerald gasped, looking over Jaune's _other_ shoulder, "Tower of Pimps is doing a set in ten minutes!" She struggled to hold in her glee, "They're like, my favorite band _ever_!" Unable to hold her emotions back any longer, she grabbed Jaune by the back of his collar and raced off to make it to the concert, leaving a trail of dust behind her. Mercury followed, halfheartedly stating "...eh, they're not bad".

Ren felt a tug on his shirt. He looked down to find Nora staring up at him pleadingly, like she'd suddenly turned into a toddler.

"Yes, Nora," he sighed, "I'll go watch the rap group with you."

"Awesome!" she cheered, jumping up and grabbing Ren by the back of his shirt, dragging him behind her while excitedly proclaiming "To the Tower of Pimps!"

Pyrrha sighed as she watched her friends all disappeared into the crowds milling about, the brochure fluttering to the ground by her feet. She picked it up and sighed once again, this time longingly. She was hoping that Emerald girl was just excited about seeing the band and not trying to flirt with her boyfr- her _close_ _friend_ who she cared for in a platonic sense.

"Let them have their fun," Cinder suggested, causing Pyrrha to start a little. "Besides, this gives the two of us a chance to get to know each other; I've actually been following your career in the tournament circuit ever since you acquired your endorsement with Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes."

"That _does_ tend to follow me around…," she mused. She looked around at the stalls in the immediate area. "Would you like to get something to eat?" she asked.

"That sounds delightful.~"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

The girls were (mostly, in Weiss's case) enjoying themselves, Crimson especially. Upon arriving at the festival they'd unfortunately learned that the live reenactment Blake wanted to see was cancelled, which brought the mood down somewhat. Determined not to have the trip wasted, Crimson suggested they get a quick bite to eat before they caught Weiss's symphony, which brought the mood back up.

"How can you two _stomach_ that... _swill_?" Weiss asked, shying away from Ruby and Yang in disgust as they each chowed down on their respective fair foods.

"Oh, want some?" Yang offered, holding a 'Pancake on a Stick' out to the heiress.

"If you don't," Crimson said, leaning in next to Yang, "I will." She gave Weiss a knowingly raised eyebrow.

Weiss reeled back, "Be my guest…."

"Sweet!" The future Ruby plucked the stick from her sister's hand, taking a dainty bite from it rapturously. "Oh _gawd_ , this is so good! Whoever invented this should have a statue made in their honor!"

"*bark*" Zwei barked. (He had some doggy treats of his own to snack on.)

"Om nom nom nom nom nom!" Ruby said, devouring her deep fried cookies.

"You know, those actually look pretty tasty…~" Crimson sneaked her hand towards Ruby's plate, only to be smacked away by the young reaper, who continued eating as if it hadn't happened. "...very good, my young apprentice," Crimson praised, rubbing her wrist where she'd been smacked, "I have taught you well!"

"Technically you haven't done any teaching," Blake pointed out as she turned the page in her "Descent of the Mad King" novel, "All you did was steal Ruby's food whenever we ate."

"And look at what happened!" She took another bite of her POAS. "I gotta say I'm kinda excited for the concert; I never really heard any Mistrali music before, so that symphony ought to be interesting."

"I still think the Achieve Men are better," Yang shrugged.

"It still amazes me how little class you have," Weiss mused, clearing her throat. "The symphonic music of Mistral is a beautiful, spiritual experience that touches you in your very soul! It's a journey of emotions that can transport you to realms beyond-"

"Unless it's being sung by three attractive young guys and three moderately attractive middle aged guys to an over produced synth track, I still think it's boring." The blonde turned to Crimson before Weiss had time to be properly indignant. "So," she asked in an effort to change the subject, pointing to the left side of the older woman's face, "what's up with the eye patch? I've been wondering about that for a while now."

The upbeat expression on Crimson's face fell at Yang's query, leaving a dark scowl in its place. "I lost my left eye in a fight, so now I wear an eye patch," she said tersely, "I don't really like talking about it."

"Oh come on!" Yang persisted, "There's gotta be more to the story than _that_! I mean, who were you fighting? Was it a Grimm? Was it the Robots?"

Ruby, picking up on her future counterpart's darkening mood better than her sister was, tried to get Yang's attention. (Zwei whimpering and flattening his ears was also a good sign.) "Uh, Yang? I think maybe you shouldn't-"

"I said ' _I don't want to talk about it'_ ," Crimson enunciated, interrupting her younger self, "So just drop it, OK?"

"...so, how'd you get the scar?"

Technically, Yang wasn't asking about the eye patch anymore.

"Blake?" Crimson sent Blake a knowing look (glare), to which the Faunus nodded.

She summarily smacked Yang upside the head.

"Ow!"

"I'm gonna take a walk," Crimson announced, ignoring a disgruntled Yang, "I need a few minutes to cool off. I saw a stand selling giant sized, chocolate chip cookies, so I might hang around there if for some reason you guys need to find me."

"Bring me back one?" Ruby pleaded as she watched her older self get up and walk off into the crowd. Just before she vanished from sight, Crimson sent up a thumbs up.

"I'd normally make some pithy remark right now," Weiss said, "but instead, I think I'll just let you figure this one out on your own."

"But I didn't do anything wrong!" Yang protested, "I just wanted to know the story behind her eye patch, nothing offensive or morbid about that, right?"

"Technically no," Blake explained, "but that doesn't mean she wanted to revisit whatever event lead up to her getting it."

"It must have been pretty bad if she doesn't like thinking about it," Ruby noted, "she usually doesn't mind talking about the future with us."

"That's a good point." Weiss leaned forward on the table they sat at, folding her hands contemplatively. "I wonder just how much about the future she's holding back from us…."

"Does it really matter?" Blake posed. "None of us knows a thing about how time travel works, so whatever the future was like for Crimson could very well turn out vastly different now that she's here in the past; for all we know we could all end up becoming different people than Crimson remembers because she came here."

"Well, I know for a fact that I'm _never_ cutting my hair," Yang said, defiant, "no way, no how!"

"Good to know where your priorities lie," Weiss sarcastically remarked.

"Hey, I take pride in my perf hair!" she protested, patting her golden mane comfortingly, "It's harder than it looks to maintain it properly!"

"You mean like the time you tried to dye it black because you wanted to-"

Yang's hand quickly found it way over her sister's mouth, preventing off any further embarrassing details from spilling out.

" _I thought we agreed never to mention that anymore_?" she said through gritted teeth.

Ruby's response was muffled by Yang's hand over her mouth to the point where not even Blake was able to make out what she said.

" _I don't seem to recall making such a promise,"_ a voice behind the two sisters said.

Ruby and Yang whirled around to get a look at the new speaker, Blake and Weiss each peeking around their respective partners' heads as they did; standing there was a fairly tall man (he was slightly taller than Neptune) with messy blond hair, wearing an outfit similar to Ren's in many respects, only yellow being the dominant color instead of green and his arms being sleeveless.

While the heiress and the Faunus weren't familiar with the man, it was clear that Team RWBY's resident sisters were.

"DAD?!" they exclaimed in perfect stereo.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _I told you I was going to introduce more characters soon! (Fans of Remnant's Reclaimer can probably already guess who the second character featured in that story is that will eventually show up here.)_

 _If you've read my story "Stages" you'll know that Taiyang appears in that as well. Needless to say, he's not going to be_ nearly _as maudlin here, though only the plot knows how long that will hold up. We'll just have to see. As for his appearance, imagine if Bruce Lee had blond hair and had Lie Ren's fashion sense and you've pretty much got it. Not sure what his weapon will be like, or if I'm even going to give him one. (Anyone have any good suggestions? Anything that isn't a hammer or a carbon copy of Ember Celica is fair game.)_

 _So, surprising or not, there's astoundingly little in the way of world building flavor outside of plot related specifics, like the trees in Forever Fall. There's even less about the the geography outside of Vale, So, if need be, I'll probably need to make up details that may or may not be rendered null by the show in the future. To anyone reading this after Volume 3 of RWBY has completely its run, think of this as a fan's interpretation._

 _Have I mentioned how much I enjoy writing for Neo? Because I really do. As an author, writing for a character that doesn't actually speak is both challenging (though I seem to have gotten the hang of it rather quickly) and fascinating. While Yang will always remain my favorite character in the show itself, where Fanfiction is concerned Neo has quickly stolen my heart. If you guys like her, maybe I'll add some more scenes outside of the one more I have planned because it's relevant to the plot._

 _On the other hand, Pyrrha is proving to be more of a challenge than I originally thought. Romance has never really been my strong suit, so feel free to blame those parts of the story for any abnormally long dry spells between postings. Also, I'm still open to having a beta reader if anyone's interested; just send me a PM and we'll work something out._

 _Until next time, y'all!_


	10. All's Fair pt2

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"What are you doing here?" Yang asked, unsure whether she was happy her father was here or not, "I thought you were still back home on Patch island."

Ruby nodded mutely in agreement.

"What, a father can't drop by unannounced on his two favorite daughters? Speaking of which…" He went up to them and scooped them both up in a massive hug. "I've missed you girls terribly since you left!"

" _Yeah, we missed you too, Dad_!" Ruby choked out. "... _Could you maybe left us breathe_?"

" _I second the motion_!" Yang concurred similarly.

"Right, sorry." He loosened his grip and let the two girls slide back onto their seats, each gasping for air. "So how's Beacon been treating you?"

"Pretty good, all things considered," Yang said, having regained her breath first, "Had to fight a bunch of terrorists, but you know how it goes..."

"Well, that's not _all_ we do...," Ruby clarified.

The blond man chuckled and mussed Ruby's hair, "Don't worry, we'll have plenty of time to catch up; I plan on staying in town until the end of the Festival." He crossed his arms over his chest, "Now why don't you introduce me to you little friends here."

Weiss bristled slightly at being referred to as Ruby and Yang's "little friend".

"Oh, right!" The crimsonette cleared her throat, turned to her friends and gestured to her father. "Weiss, Blake, this our dad, Taiyang Xiao-Long. Dad, these are our friend and partners, Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna."

"A pleasure to meet you." He gave a short but respectful bow, "I've heard nothing but good things about you from my daughters."

"Likewise," Blake said, returning the bow.

"We've heard good things about you as well." Weiss gave a small curtsey.

"*bark*" Zwei barked.

"Hang on, you didn't explain why you're here," Yang pointed out. "Not that I'm not glad you're here and everything, but you could have called us or something to let us know you were coming."

"I did call," he said, "yesterday morning. I mean, I _tried_ to call, but neither of you picked up, so I just decided to surprise you instead. Although, I would have thought the hint I sent would have clued you in a little better."

"What hint?" Ruby wondered, question marks floating above her head before suddenly changing into a large exclamation point, " _Zwei_ was the hint!?"

"Yep!" he said proudly, popping the P, "I figured you girl would like to spend some time with him after being away for months."

"Excuse me, Mr. Xiao-Long?" Weiss interjected, "I have a question."

"Go ahead, Miss Schnee," he nodded, "so long as you promise to call me 'Taiyang' from now on; ' _Mr_. Xiao-Long' makes me feel too old."

"OK then," she continued, " _Taiyang_...WHAT WERE YOU _THINKING_ WHEN YOU MAILED THAT POOR, INNOCENT _DARLING_ HALFWAY ACROSS REMNANT?! I MEAN, WHO _MAILS A DOG_?" WHAT IF HE GOT LOST IN TRANSIT, OR CRUSHED BY A HEAVIER PACKAGE, OR…!" She scooped Zwei up and held him protectively against her chest, nuzzling him with her cheek.

Taiyang was completely unphased by the maelstrom Weiss unleashed, a stark contrast to his daughters, who were now both sporting the "windswept" look, their eye wide with shock.

"I gave him food," the father shrugged, as if _that_ were the biggest point of contention.

Weiss couldn't find the right words to express how not the point that was.

"Besides," Taiyang continued, "as far as I know, he's never been even remotely injured; I don't even know if her _can_ be injured!"

"Which reminds me, fire doesn't hurt him either," Ruby told her father, snapping her fingers.

"Really? And how'd you find that out?"

"It's...kind of a long story…."

"Well, I've got time. Regale me."

"Then you'd better pull up a seat." Yang patted the seat next to her. "We got _a lot_ to talk about…"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Have I ever told you how much I love this place?" Sun Wukong asked as he chowed down on his fair food, "Because I do."

"Not that I don't think Vale isn't cool and all," Neptune said, "but that's just disgusting."

"Dude, I'm telling you, you're missing out!" He took another bite of his food, "Seriously, whoever invented Pizza in a Cup should have songs written about them!" He licked his fingers with many satisfied smacking sound heard.

Neptune just sighed, shaking his head despondently. He loved his best friend, he really did, but there were just some things he drew the line at.

Artery clogging monstrosities like Pizza in a Cup being on of them.

"No thanks, I'm good." The blue haired boy once again scanned the crowd of festival goers, "Are you _sure_ Team RWBY's going to be here?"

"Abfowoowy!" the monkey Faunus said through a mouthful of cheese, tomatoes, and pepperoni before gulping it down. "Like, twelve percent sure beyond a doubt."

Neptune raised an eyebrow, "And the other 88%?"

"They _might_ be here," he said, tossing the now empty cup in a nearby trashcan, "with 7% of that being the possibility that they aren't here at all."

"...you just wanted an excuse to eat junk food, didn't you?"

"Possibly," Sun shamelessly admitted, appearing a banana seemingly from thin air and peeling it, "not like we get stuff like this that often." He took a bite of the fruit, "But I really do think you should hang out with your girlfriend; you two just look so _cute_ together!"

"And since when did you becoming a matchmaker?"

Sun shrugged, "Since I decided you were fun to tease about dating Ice Queen." He finished the banana and chucked the peel behind him blindly. "...And maybe I also wanted to hang out with Blake a little."

"Following you so far," Neptune nodded, "and you think they'll be here because…?"

Sun made an about face. "Uh, have you _met_ Yang and Ruby?" he asked rhetorically, "There's _no way_ those two didn't drag their team here today!" He continued walking backwards, arms folded behind his head. "Great food, great people, great music, great food...Hell, I'd be surprised if when we find them, they aren't-"

Which was why he didn't notice the woman until both of them had already toppled to the ground.

"Holy crap, I'm so sorry!" he apologized, "Are you OK?"

"Yeah," the woman nodded, picking herself up, "just a bit startled." She bent down and offered sun a hand, "I was kinda lost in thought and wasn't paying attention to where I was walking."

"Ditto here," he said, taking the proffered hand. Once he was back on his feet Sun dusted himself off. "I normally don't make a habit of walking into people, not literally anyway."

"Eh, no harm done. Wish my cookies survived, though…" She stared at the ground, where the remains of a rather large chocolate chip cookie lay, in all their crumby tragedy. "I was _really_ looking forward to it…"

"Would you like us to buy you another one?" Neptune offered. (He quickly smacked his best buddy for being clumsy.) "It wouldn't be any trouble."

"Thanks. By the way, the name's Crimson."

"Sun Wukong," Sun said, "Faunus extraordinaire and liberator of helpless, crescent shaped fruit everywhere!" He lazily jerked his thumb at his partner, "And this is my sidekick, Neptune."

"Neptune Vasilias," Neptune said, holding his hand out, "I'm the brains of this outfit. Pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise," she said, shaking his hand in turn.

"You're not the same Crimson that everyone's talking about at Beacon," Sun asked, "are you?"

"Guilty as charged."

"Rad! I bet you're gonna kill it in the tournament!"

"Oh, I'm not competing," she said, waving the notion away, "it'd be unfair to all the young people if I wiped the floor with all of them."

"You think you're really that strong?" Neptune asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Crimson" scoffed. "Well, considering I just made a third year team cry for Mommy and shrugged off a blow from Yang that would have leveled a building, I'd say so."

"She's got a point," Sun conceded, "Scarlet said he and Sage saw the whole thing."

"I guess we'll just take your word for it, then." Neptune reached for his wallet, "So want kind of cookie do you want?"

"Chocolate chip, same as the last one." Then she snapped her fingers, "Actually, could you make it two? I sorta promised someone I'd get her one."

"You're here with friends? Awesome!" Sun cheered, "Friends always make things better! Let's go meet 'em!"

"Don't you two have girlfriends?" the lady asked, glancing between the two suspiciously, "I don't know how they'd feel about you hanging out with an older woman."

"Yeah, but we can't seem to find them," Sun explained, "And it's not like we're trying to two time them, three pairs of eyes are just better than two."

"That sounds pretty weak, bro," Neptune chastised before turning to the woman, "Ignore him, for he knows not what he says."

"Well, aren't you a gentleman," she praised, "your girl must be really special, huh?"

"Yeah, kinda." Neptune blushed, rubbing the back of his head, "She could be a little rough around the edges, but she's making improvements."

After a short eternity of scrutiny, the woman smiled. "OK then, you two can hang out with me and my gal pals until we find your girlfriends." She slung her arms over both boys, "Now let's go get those cookies!"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"...And that's when we realized that Ruby was missing, just as Zwei rushed into the room. Weiss and Blake woke up and we were all like 'where did he come from?', and then Dr. Oobleck comes around the corner, looking all serious and stuff. He says ' _Your leader is in grave danger_ ', and Weiss is like 'Did she go off to hunt some Grimm? Because I totally believe that's something she would do'."

"I never said that!" Weiss protested

"I'm not that impulsive!" Ruby cried.

"Up bup bup!" Yang made a "shut your pie hole" sign with her hands, then gestured to herself, " _Who's_ telling the story here?"

"You are…," the crimsonette grumbled, huffily folding her arms over her chest.

"Exactly! So please hold all questions until the end of the narrative, _OK?_ ~" She cleared her throat and turned back to Taiyang and continued the story, "Anyway, we all headed out into the city, Zwei dutifully leading the way back to the hole where Ruby fell-"

"I don't think it was entirely necessary to focus so much on your outfit at the dance," Blake interjected. "Or to reenact the impromptu dance number that JNPR did."

"Hey, I said no questions until the end!"

"I have to agree with your friend here, Yang," Taiyang shrugged, "as well done as your dancing was, it didn't really add anything to the overall plot."

"Well _I_ thought it was cool," the blond harumphed.

"...I liked it," Ruby said in a small voice, bopping her fingers together.

" _Anyway..._ ," she said again, "We followed Zwei to the hole where Ruby fell, and Dr. Oobleck started ranting about how 'there's an underground city under here!' and 'I should have realized it!' and other cliches brainy types spout. He-"

" _S'up, losers!"_

The group turned around to find Sun Wukong waving at them from atop a trashcan.

"Oh, hey Sun," Yang waved back, "What's up?"

He shrugged, "Eh, you know, hanging out, taking in the local flavor." He looked over his shoulder, "Neptune should be around here somewhere- thought they were right behind me…"

"Who's behind you?" Blake asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Just Neptune and a lady we accidentally ran into," he explained. He hopped down from the can and sauntered over behind Blake, "Truth is, we were actually looking for you girls, Blakey and Ice Queen here specifically."

"Hey!" Weiss scoffed.

"Please don't call me 'Blakey'," Blake pleaded, blushing slightly as she sent a glare Sun's way.

"Sorry!"

"Another friend of yours?" Taiyang asked.

"Oh, that's Sun," Ruby explained, "he hangs around with us sometimes."

"Mostly with _this_ lovely lady right here." The monkey Faunus plopped himself down next to his girlfriend, patting her on the shoulder.

"Stop it…," she protested weakly, unsuccessfully trying to hide her blush.

"You said something about Neptune being here?" Weiss asked, her voice slightly betraying the eagerness she felt.

"Like I said," Sun said, "he _was_ right behind me, I dunno what happened." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "Maybe that woman's still trying to decide what cookies to get…"

Weiss was about to ask "what woman?" when she noticed Crimson emerge from the crowd, waving at them.

"I'm back!" she announced as she jogged over, slowing to a walk as she got closer, "I got the cookies, but I accidentally dropped them so I had to get more. And I ran into-"

"Summer?!" Taiyang shot to his feet, his eyes practically falling out of his head at the sight of his dead wife standing before him, looking like she was about to go to war or something.

Crimson looked equally shocked at the unexpected appearance of her father.

"Oh fuck…."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

In all his years the last thing Taiyang was ever expecting was to suddenly see Summer Rose standing before him again. Granted, there were many things the man wasn't expecting to see, and quite a few he hoped never to see come to pass, but seeing his dead wife magically alive and well was most definitely at the top of the list.

He stared at her dumbly, his mouth unable to decide whether to hang slack or not. He couldn't believe it, he just couldn't! It was inconceivable! It was preposterous!

And yet….

The last he saw of Summer was when she was leaving for her last, ill-fated mission, when she was waving goodbye to him and Yang; she wore a tragic smile on her face, almost as if she already knew the outcome. Her cloak was blowing in the wind, making its wearer look even more graceful and ethereal than she normally was (at least to him, anyway).

And now here she was, sans cloak, perfectly alive and well.

Except for the eye patch, that was new….

"Well, this is awkward," she said, bopping her pointer fingers together, "Wasn't really expecting you to show up…."

"I think we should go," said Weiss, tugging on Blake's sleeve.

"Yeah…" The dark Faunus nodded and followed Weiss to a nearby stall, dragging Sun behind her despite his protests.

Now that the Xiao-Long family had some relative privacy, Taiyang took a second look and "Summer"; despite having almost identical features, both reason and his own eyes told him that the woman before him was _not_ the same person as his late wife. Little details like the part of her hair and the way her lip turned up when she smirked (awkwardly…) were all things that told him she wasn't Summer.

"Oh," Ruby realized, also bopping her fingers, "I knew I was forgetting something…."

Then something clicked in his head. He glanced at his daughter, then back to the woman, repeating the process a couple of times.

"Let me save you the trouble," Yang said upon noticing her father's confusion, "they're both Ruby, one of them is just from the future."

"Call me Crimson," the woman added.

"...pull the other one," he said eventually.

"It's completely true," the woman said. Her face scrunched up, like she was struggling in deep thought, and after a moment she snapped her fingers. "And I know just how to prove it, too!" She stood tall and pointed emphatically at Taiyang, "You used to wet the the bed until you were twelve years old!"

Taiyang blanched, all color disappearing from his face like a curtain being dropped. This...this was witchcraft! He'd never told _anyone_ outside of his parents (it had been unavoidable) about that dark chapter in his life, not even Summer! He lunged across the table and grabbed the woman by the collar of her hood, slamming her down hard on the table.

" _How do you know about that?_ " he growled, startling Yang and Ruby into hiding behind Zwei. " _The only people on the entire planet who that are my parents, so unless you learned how to speak with the dead, then you'd better have a real good explanation for knowing that!_ "

"You did," she grunted, "in the future! ...and your reaction right now is confirming it. If you let me up, I'll explain."

Taiyang looked over at his daughters, both of the nodding their heads emphatically.

"Fine," he sighed, releasing his grip, "Start explaining." The woman cleared her throat and took a deep breath.

The woman took a deep breath. "...SointhrfuturetheworldgetsreallyreallyshittyandyousortahaveaslightcaseofdementiaandonedaysomethingreallyreallyshittyhappenedtomeandIendedupatyourhouseaftermindlesslyragingforabitanywaylongstoryshortyoutriedtocheermeupbytellingmeaboutyourchildhoodandthesubjectofyouradolecentincontinencecameup!" she said in one long sentence. "...slightly."

Taiyang mulled it over.

"...what happened that made me think telling you my darkest secret?" he asked.

Now it was the woman's turn to blanch, an embarrassing grimace creeping onto her face. After what looked like a brief, internal struggle, she motioned for him to lean in close.

He immediately regretted doing so when he heard the answer she gave.

"Uh, Dad?" Ruby tried waving to get her father's attention, but what Taiyang just heard chilled him to the very core, to the point where he couldn't process anything else due to the words she said replaying over and over in his mind.

If _that_ was what the future held, he was glad he got dementia before it happened.

"Hey, Dad, snap out of it!" Yang reached over and snapped her fingers in front of Taiyang's face.

"Uh-wuh!" the man gasped, shaking himself back to reality.

"What the hell did she say to you?" the blonde wondered.

The woman glared at Yang, "If I wanted you and Ruby to know what I told him, I would have said it out loud."

"Tch! Well _excuse me_ , princess!"

" _I'm not a princess!_ " both Rubies yelled at the same time.

" _See?!"_ Weiss called.

"So...you're really my daughter?" he wondered aloud. He looked her over once more (she didn't noticed because she was busy flipping Weiss Schnee the bird). "My daughter...from the _future!_ …" Slowly, he was coming to accept the notion that a future version of his late wife's daughter was currently sitting across from him. With this came a whole slew of question concerning her life and how it would end up turning out. One question in particular worming its way to the front of his mind until he could think of nothing else.

"Before you ask," she said just as Taiyang was about to open his mouth, "the answer's probably yes, especially considering the War goes on for over a decade."

"What'd he wanna know?" Ruby asked her older self, taking a drink from her soda cup.

Crimson shrugged, "Eh, probably if I've had sex or not."

Ruby then did the mother of all spit takes, followed almost immediately by Yang and her father. (Neither full blooded Xiao-Long was drinking anything, for the record.)

"...what?"

"You mean you've-" Taiyang said before cutting himself off, "Nope! On second thought, I don't want to know; as far as I'm concerned, you can take the secrets of your sex life to your grave!"

"Yeah, I suppose that's for the best," she shrugged, "we wouldn't want you get any more grey hairs or anything…~"

"Someone say something about grey hair?" Sun asked, suddenly reappearing with Blake and Weiss in tow. He reached behind his "girlfriend", pulling out Neptune. "We found this guy, by the way; turns out he was getting bombarded by a bunch girls who wanted his 'company' and he didn't have the heart to just walk away."

"Hey, cool guys don't just 'walk away'," the cerulean haired youth said, "I had to explain to them that I already had a girlfriend, and she's the only girl for me." He slung his arm around Weiss's shoulder, giving her a light kiss on the top of her head. "Right, Snow Angel?"

"Oh, stop it…~" she said, blushing slightly.

"Aw,~" Crimson cooed, "dat's sweet!" She stood up and plucked Weiss away from her boyfriend ("Yoink!"), dragging her off as she feebly reached for Neptune, "Unfortunately, we've got a symphony to get to, and Dad showing up ate some of that time."

"But- but- but…!"

"Now now, you were the one who wanted to hear some classical music, so we're going to do that right now," she said, "You can bitch at me about it later, when we get to that training you said was going to happen today."

"We should probably go after her," Ruby said to her dad as Crimson and her hostage (Weiss) assimilated into the crowds, "you wanna come with?"

"Thanks for the offer," he said, "but I have to check in with the tournament officials."

"What for?" Yang asked, "You not gonna compete, are you?"

Taiyang shook his head, "No, I'm going to be one of the referees; didn't I just mention that?"

"I don't think so," Blake said, "Yang was taking forever to explain how Zwei was fire resistant-"

"Hey!"

"-and Crimson showed up, so..."

Taiyang nodded, now recalling what information he'd actually shared. "Well, the short version is that I get asked to be a ref right as I was planning to come visit, but it seems I've lost sight of your friend and...yourself, I guess?"

"Just call her Crimson," Yang assured him, "or you'll go red from the aneurysm." She paused laughter, to which she predictably received none. "...geddit?"

Blake just turned around and mechanically headed in the direction Crimson dragged Weiss.

"Oh come on!"

"You guys wanna tag along?" Ruby asked Sun and Neptune.

"Pass," Sun said, "I'd rather go see Tower of Pimps."

"I think that show just ended," Neptune said, checking his Scroll.

"OK, then I'ma just get more food!"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"That was _awesome_!" Emerald exclaimed as the group headed back to where they left Pyrrha and Cinder, "T.O.P. _rocks_!"

"Bow to the Tower of Pimps!" Nora exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air like she just didn't care. (Which she didn't.) "...And the Queen of the Castle!"

"Eh," Mercury shrugged, "I've seen better." He folded his arms behind his head as he walked, "There weren't enough pictures."

Jaune looked confused. "How can _music_ not have enough pictures?" he wondered.

"Ignore him," Emerald groaned, "he suffers from 'chronic asshole syndrome'."

"I'm...sorry?" he said, perplexed. "That's a real thing?"

"It's not contagious, is it?" Nora asked worriedly, hiding from 'patient zero' on the far side of Ren.

"It's not a real thing," Ren clarified, both for his partner's and his leader's benefit. "He's just being an asshole."

"Um, _rude_!" the silver haired boy scoffed, "Sensing a bit of hostility from you there, Ponytail."

Emerald rolled her eyes as Mercury tried to antagonize the stoic Lie Ren, (having both seen and been through this shtick many times before), though he seemed to be getting more of a reaction out of the Ginger girl.

Seeking respite from her partner's idiocy, she turned over to Jaune, who was looking somewhat subdued for just coming from a awesome rap concert. "What's eating you?" she asked, trying to sound sincere.

"Huh?" the scraggly kid started, looking up from the ground, "Oh, it's nothing…."

"It's obviously not nothing," she noted, patting him on the shoulder, "so what's up?"

"It's…," he said, after briefly mulling the decision over, "Should we really have left Pyrrha and your friend back there? I don't really know what kind of music Pyrrha likes, but I think she'd like just being included."

Ah ha, there it was.

"She kinda strikes me as the type who doesn't listen to a lot of T.O.P.," Emerald said before elaborating, "She reminds me of Cinder in a lot of ways, and I _know_ Cindy isn't into 'that rap music', as she puts it, so I'm sure your girlfriend won't hold it against you that went without her."

"...she isn't technically my girlfriend," Jaune explained, somewhat reluctantly. "We're actually just normal friends right now."

"So you're single, then?" she asked eagerly, waggling her eyebrows. After he sputtered for a few seconds she mercifully put him out of his misery, "Don't worry, I'm not trying to make a move on you; you'd _know_ if I were doing that!"

"Good to know…," Jaune said hesitantly, unsure whether to feel any better given this new information.

Emerald of course picked up on this.

"OK then," she said, "let's get back to our friends!"

She gave him another pat and cheeky grin and turned back to the other three in their group; Mercury and Nora had, at some point, gotten into a heated argument over whether X-Ray & Vav or Mogar was the better comic series.

"I'm telling you," Nora said, "Mogar is better; he's practically invincible!"

"But not _completely_ ," Mercury countered, "X-Ray and Vav could _absolutely_ win with their reluctant teamwork and parkour mastery."

" _Mogar can_ literally _turn into a bear!_ " she enunciated, "All other arguments are invalid!"

"And Vav is 'British', what's your point?"

"This must be what Hell is like…," Ren moaned, pinching the bridge on his nose.

"Yeah," Jaune agreed, "let's get going."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Cinder was really a fascinating and insightful young woman, especially for being as young as she was. She was intelligent, well traveled, and apparently a competent fighter, though Pyrrha had yet to witness that. She was also very well read, as the last fifteen minutes of their conversation could attest, quoting many of the well known Mistrali philosophers to back up her arguments.

And while she did ask about her time as a career fighter, it was a genuine pleasure to have a discussion that _didn't_ revolve solely around hitting and shooting things.

"I believe that justice should be the responsibility of _anyone_ able to carry it out," she said, "not just the government or the Huntsmen." She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, "If the world if ever going to change for the better, the people need to start actively wanting justice instead of just wanting it met out."

"...Socrati, right?" Pyrrha guessed, "I remember reading about him in primary school."

"Exactly. I've always found his views on the responsibility of the masses to be quite provocative."

"I prefer the one that goes ' _man who runs behind bus gets exhausted, man who runs in front of bus gets tired_ '," Mercury said, plopping himself down beside the girls.

"You got that from the funny pages!" Emerald accused him, trailing behind with the remainder of team JNPR, "In fact, I know you did; I saw you reading them this morning!"

"Emerald, Mercury…," Cinder admonished. She glanced between the two of them, a knowing edge in her eyes.

"Sorry…," Emerald said, drooping sorrowfully. Mercury just leaned back, shooting off a lazy thumbs up.

"H-how was the concert?" Pyrrha asked, hoping to steer the conversation in a more friendly direction.

"It was _awesome_!" Nora cheered, "They completely rocked the house; you totally should have come!"

"Yeah," Jaune added, "we missed you."

Pyrrha fought to keep from blushing.

"I didn't mind," she said, "Miss Fall and I managed to entertain ourselves."

"Indeed," Cinder nodded, "We've been having quite an interesting discussion on politics; Miss Nikos is quite the intelligent young woman."

"What were you discussing?" Ren asked.

"Not much," she shrugged, "we were just talking about talking about the responsibility of the common man to take a stand against injustices before you all returned."

"Bo- _ring_!~" Mercury chimed, "If that's what we're going to be talking about that I'ma just take a little nap." He suddenly appeared an X-Ray  & Vav comic from thin air and laid it over his face. "Wake me when something interesting happens," he said, his voice muffled by the glossy paper.

"Where did you get that?" Emerald asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow.

"On the ground back there," he said dispassionately, shrugging. "Definitely not from that noisy kid."

Pyrrha scanned the crowd of people and saw a young mouse Faunus, maybe seven or eight years old, bawling his eyes out while being comforted by a woman she assumed to be his mother or his aunt (she didn't have mouse ears like the boy did).

Before she could do anything, however, Emerald got up, swiped the comic off her friend ("Excuse you!") and headed over to the crying boy.

"Here you go," she said, kneeling next to the distraught child, "You dropped this before, right?" The boy choked back his sobs and looked up, his whole face lighting up when his saw his lost tome being offered back to him. He squealed for joy, scooping up the comic and hugging it gently to his chest.

"Thank you so much!" the woman said to Emerald, mussing the boy's hair playfully, "I don't know how to thank you!"

"It was nothing," Emerald assured her, only for the woman to protest.

"Please, there has to be something I can do to show how grateful we are," she insisted, "The bookstore where we bought it just closed down recently, and the owner said that this was a particularly hard to find issue."

"Well, just enjoy the book. And if you get the chance, have him read 'Third Crusade' if you can find a copy; it's a really engaging read."

"Tanksh, lady!" the boy called as Emerald made her way back to the group, the haven student giving a curt wave back.

"That was certainly nice of you," Cinder remarked as Emerald pulled up an extra chair.

"Yeah!" added Jaune, "That was really cool."

Emerald waved dismissively, "Oh, you know, just doing what any good citizen would do."

"And here I am without my trumpet," Mercury drawled, "or I would have played you a fanfare."

"You can play the trumpet?" Nora marveled, to which the silver haired youth smacked his head.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _Well, as you've just seen, there was a bit with Jaune and Pyrrha there at the end._

 _Guess why it took so long to finish this chapter!_

 _Anyway, in response to the call for suggestions about Taiyang's weapon(s?), I've come to a decision about what they and/or it will be. He's going to use twin tonfa with two alternate functions: the first is that they can each be used as short range flamethrowers, and the second is that they can be attached end to end and extend into a pole (a la Ruyi-Bang and Jingu-Bang). In keeping with the Bruce Lee thing I mentioned last chapter, I've decided to call them "Heavenly Glory". (On a completely unrelated note, I highly recommend watching "Enter the Dragon"; it's a really engaging watch.) He'll definitely be back at some point, possibly during the tournament, depending on how things go there._

 ** _THIS NEXT BIT IS IMPORTANT._** _I believe I mentioned this before, but if not then let me definitively state that you out there in reader land are free to submit simple OCs that will be featured in the tournament for the cast of RWBY to fight. (Or possible show up as White Fang if they're not used here.) The criteria are simple: state their race (Human or Faunus), general info about their appearance (Hair color, outfit, weapons, etc), their fighting style (again, keep it general; I can get a pretty good idea from their weapons how they'll fight, but things like "She's relentless" or "He favors doing this thing" help me choreograph the fight itself), and a name (bonus points if you can reference a historical figure or some classic literature). **PLEASE DO NOT COPY PREEXISTING CHARACTERS FROM ANIME, MANGA, VIDEOGAMES, MOVIES, OR RECENT BOOKS.** I can do that well enough on my own if I wanted to._

 _So, anyone want to take a stab at what Crimson's next nightmare is going to be about? It's coming up soon, so place your bets now._

 _Also, as of this chapter, RWBY Volume 3, Episode 1 has been premiered at RTX 2015, though I'm still undecided on whether I'm going to watch it when it gets put on YouTube. However, if (as rumors state) Winter Schnee's character model gets showcased, Velvet's mysterious weapon gets revealed, and we actually get a concrete character model for Qrow, then I will definitely make a point to watch it. If by some chance someone reading this has been to RTX and has seen the premier, then please let me know if any or all of these points get addressed. (Just a yes or no will suffice; I'd like to discover the details on my own.)_


	11. This is gonna hurt

_A/N at the bottom._

 _Theme song for the chapter: This Is Gonna Hurt by Sixx:A.M._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Alright girls!" Crimson announced. After the symphony she found a vacant warehouse a little bit removed from the Festival grounds, stating that she'd start on the girls training for the tournament. "I know I haven't exactly been 'orthodox' in training you so far-"

"You left us in the middle of a pack of Beowolves," Weiss reminded the older version of her team leader, "I still have the sore muscles to prove it."

"*bark!*" Zwei barked.

" _But!_ ...now the kid gloves are coming off." She cracked her neck and slammed a fist into her palm, "However, before I can help any of you improve, I'm gonna need to know what things need improving. So, for the next ten minutes, I want all of you to attack me, doing anything you can think of to trip me up." She grinned a conniving, evil looking grin, "And as an added incentive, whoever manages to knock me out gets to make me do one embarrassing thing of their choice, which I can't refuse no matter what."

" _Anything?_ " Yang asked, her eyebrow raised.

Crimson nodded in confirmation. "Yep; anything! Within the bounds of basic decency of course." She slipped into a fighting stance, making the "come at me!" motion, "Nine minutes, forty-five seconds…"

Needing no further urging, Yang launched herself at her sister [future], a manic grin plastered on her face at the thought of finally seeing Crimson brought down a peg. She swung a wild right hook at the woman's face, hoping to give herself an early advantage and blind her, but Crimson effortlessly dodged out of the way before Yang's fist could connect, quickly following it up with a chop to the back of Yang's neck.

"Note to self," the future warrior said aloud, "Yang is impulsive and attacks without thinking-"

She immediately clapped her hands above her head, catching the blade of Gambol Shroud in them.

"...and Blake is predictable." Using only her upper body strength she tossed Blake to the side and wrenching her weapon out of her grasp, shifting Gambol into its gun mode before tossing it back to its owner. She dusted her hands off and was about to face her younger self when she suddenly found she couldn't move. She looked down and saw that her feet were being held to the floor by a black glyph. Then, when she looked back up, she saw a smirking Weiss holding Myrtenaster, the Dust chamber in the middle spinning to the light blue Dust. The heiress swung her weapon along to ground, and a path of ice began to spike its way towards Crimson.

Just as the ice threatened to ensnare the elder Rose in its cold grasp she rammed her fist into it, causing it to shatter and break into hundreds of pieces. She immediately followed up the first punch with a second, sending one of the shards of ice back towards its source, which in this case was Weiss. She yelped and swatted the ice out of the way before it hit her, and turned back just in time to see Crimson standing directly in front of her.

Crimson then grabbed her by the lapels of her bolero jacket and lifted her off the the ground.

"OK, _you_ put too much faith in your own abilities, plus you're easily distracted." She dropped Weiss unceremoniously on her behind and tapped her foot, waiting for the next attack. "Come on out, Mini Me!" she called, "It's no use, I know exactly what you're thinking!" Suddenly an idea came to her, "...I still have those cookies on me."

Almost immediately Ruby barreled straight for her older self, furiously swinging Crescent Rose in an attempt to retrieve the fabled cookies. She effortlessly dodged her younger counterpart's attacks without much thought, either because Ruby was just that easy to read or because she was essentially fighting _herself_.

 _Was I_ really _that obsessed with cookies?_ she wondered, as she reflexively juked to the right.

"You're also easily distracted, and too easy to manipulate" she said aloud as Ruby shifted Crescent Rose to its sniper form. She fired round after round at Crimson, only the woman to dodge each and everyone of them with short, controlled bursts of her Semblance.

Needless to say, Ruby was getting a little annoyed that all of her shots were missing.

"Why! Won't! You! Stand! Still!" she said, punctuating each word with a pull of the trigger.

Crimson merely chuckled and zipped behind the younger crimsonette. She reached over Ruby's shoulder and twisted Crescent Rose out of her grasp, shifting it back to a scythe.

She then held it high over Ruby's head, grinning as the fifteen year old Huntress futilely trying to jump up to get it.

Meanwhile, Weiss cast her clockwork glyph on Blake, who launched herself towards Crimson (who was still gleefully teasing Ruby). She held Gambol Shroud in one hand and its cleaver sheath in the other, swinging them in the hopes of catch her off guard while she was tormenting her younger self.

Unfortunately, Crimson saw her coming, kicking Ruby out of the way and bringing out her own, deadlier Crescent Rose in scythe form. She quickly parried Blake's strike and leaped back, avoiding the follow up flurry of blows the young Faunus dealt.

"Not bad," the recently appointed teacher praised, "a bit of creative thinking! Unfortunately…" She countered with her own barrage swings, Blake barely managing to parry or dodge. "Never try to beat a speedster at their own game!" She blocked a two handed attack from Blake while tossing Ruby's Crescent Rose back to its owner, casually swatted Blake away, and switched her Crescent Rose to its sniper form, firing rounds at Weiss (she squeaked while trying to dodge them).

" _That was a cheap shot!"_ Yang shouted, charging the older woman with her Semblance fully activated. She roared as she threw a wild Haymaker, nearly demolishing the future Cresent Rose in the process.

"All's fair in Love and War, Sister Dear!~" Crimson was holding Yang's fist back with her left hand, using the right to shift Future Cres to Sniper Mode. "Thems' the breaks!"

She was about to fire a round off (with her Semblance on Yang would be perfectly fine, save for some slight soreness) when the weapon suddenly flew out of her hand.

"Just tell me where the cookies are," Ruby said, chambering another round, "and no one else has to get hurt!"

"Hmm, maybe you and I should have a talk about that cookie addiction of yours…," the battle hardened Huntress mused, casually holding her sister at bay.

Faster than any of the girls could follow, Crimson flung one of her knives at Ruby, sticking it in Crescent Rose so that it jammed up the trigger mechanism. She then drew one of her pistols and emptied its clip at Yang, knocking the blonde back in surprise.

"Not bad so far," she praised, "but there's still about five minutes left on the clock, let's see what you girls are really capable of!"

"Weiss!" Yang called out, "Freezer Burn!"

"On it!" the heiress replied, plunging Myrtenaster into the ground and causing a circle of ice to spread over the floor. Yang then ran over to epicenter and punched it; with her Semblance active the impact caused all the ice to instantaneously evaporate into steam, immediately filling the empty space of the warehouse. Crimson once again found herself rooted to the floor with Weiss's glyph.

 _OK then,_ she thought, _this is better, but it's the same tactic we used against that Paladi-_

She was cut off by the familiar sound of Crescent Rose being fired, ducking just before her younger self sailed overhead, crashing into some discarded boxes when she missed her target.

"You almost had me with that one," Crimson said as Ruby untangled herself from her crater, "I thought Blake would be the one to attack me there."

"Burning Thorn!" Ruby shouted.

"Burning what?" Crimson asked before she realized what was going on; Ruby shifted Crescent Rose so the scythe blade was parallel to the shaft, holding the whole thing out to the side. Weiss switched to her red Dust and crossed blades with Cres, igniting both weapons. Weiss then leaped back and Yang delivered a massive punch to the weapon, sending it and its wielder spinning. Weiss created a series of glyphs that directed Ruby towards her older self.

Now Crimson was actually starting to get worried.

Thinking quickly, she threw another of her knives in Ruby's path. Because of the uncontrolled spinning and the small size of the knife Ruby tripped over it before Weiss could properly redirect her trajectory and the young team leader went tumbling into another pile of boxes, the flames on her weapon nearly nicking the edges of Crimson's hair as she tilted her head to the side.

"I'm not gonna lie," Crimson said as Yang and Weiss rushed over to see if their leader was OK (Yang dismissed her Semblance), "that's a new one for me." Weiss's glyph dissolved again and the older Ruby went to retrieve her weapon, "Where'd you come up with that, anyway? I don't remember ever coming up with an attack like _that_!"

" _O-o-o-ohhhh…,_ " Ruby little Zwei's with wings circling around her head as her sister and her partner helped her up. Zwei, who'd been content to let the humans (and Faunus) fight with each other, now trotted up to Ruby #1 and started sniffing her. " _Oh_ hey Zwei! ...when'd you get a brother?"

"...Yeah, that doesn't sound good?" Crimson pointed out. "That crash looked pretty gnarly; we should probably take a break until Mini Me gets her marbles sorted."

"Let's hope she doesn't get a concussion from that," Weiss remarked, "she ditzy enough as it is without adding on the possibility of brain damage."

"You know that's my sister you're talking about, Schnee," Yang growled, "I'm perfectly fine with hitting girls, don't think I won't!"

"*bark!*" said Zwei, pawing at Yang's boots.

"Huh? What is it, boy?" She looked around and noticed that they were missing a certain cat eared member of their team. "Hey, did anyone see where Blake went?"

Weiss and Crimson looked up from Ruby (she still had the Winged Zwei's fluttering around her head), each scanning the area and, upon not finding any sign of their Faunus compatriot, shrugged in response.

"The heck did she go?"

Weiss sighed condescendingly, "Um, why don't we just call her?" She held up her Scroll for emphasis.

"Good idea!" Ruby drawled, "Give the kitty a call!~"

"You do that," Crimson said to Weiss, "I'll wake Ruby up." She knelt down next to her younger self and gently held her nose closed.

"Um," Yang asked, "What are you-"

"Hold that thought." She continued to hold Ruby's nose closed for a couple more seconds while she took a large, chocolate chip cookie (plus the paper sleeve it came in) out and held it in front her face. She then let Ruby's nose go, the fifteen year old reaper shaking her head clear and focusing on the delectable treat, reflexively chomping at it.

"Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I picked it up in the future," Crimson explained, holding her younger self at arm's length as she frantically tried to reach her Precious, "you end up having to find _really_ creative solutions when you barely have any supplies."

"...Makes sense."

"I'm not getting any signal in here," Weiss said, shutting her Scroll down. "Any other ideas?"

"About what?" Ruby asked, to which Weiss smacked her head.

"We can't seem to find Blake," Yang explained, "Crimson apparently smacked her into the stratosphere."

"The sad thing is, you might actually be right about that," Crimson admitted, blushing slightly as she sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "Sometimes I forget how strong I actually am…."

At that moment Balke suddenly crashed through the roof, dropping directly on top of Yang.

"... _found her,_ " Yang's muffled voice came from under the Ninja like Faunus, feebly (and shakily) raising her pointer finger in the air.

Blake moaned, picking herself up off of her partner and gingerly rubbing her stomach.

"Now I know what getting punched by Yang feels like…."

"Now _I_ know what being Jaune feels like," Yang countered, peeling herself off the floor.

"Well, that sorted itself out," Crimson chuckled, looking at her own beat up Scroll. "...and it looks like we still have a few minutes before my time limit is up; anyone still up for a little rumble?"

All four girls groaned, desperately wishing to get back to the tranquility and solace of Beacon.

Zwei just panted happily, wondering when Food time was.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _What could he possibly want to see me for?_ wondered Glynda as she made her way through the corridors of James's warship to his office.

She'd received a message on her Administrator type Scroll stating that the general had some matters regarding the Festival to discuss with her. It was inconvenient, since she had matters of the School to deal with (apparently word had somehow circulated that Miss Thorne would be taking a teaching position in the near future, and many of the students were submitting written requests for her to schedule matches against the older Ruby Rose) and what with Beacon playing host to all the exchange students who came for the tournament and planning lessons around what the children would be facing in said tournament, on top of the normal problems she usually dealt with (tardy and disruptive students, Faunus being bullied, ect.) it was one of the few times in her career she would consider herself as being overworked.

And while she still respected the man on a professional level, James Ironwood was not quite on her list of people that she cared to hold a conversation with at the moment.

 _Damn the Vale Council and their sophomoric political two-timing!_ she thought as she recalled the new that James had essentially relieved Ozpin of his responsibilities overseeing the Festival and it's tournament centerpiece. She knew that it was the Government's own fault that the White Fang had gotten away with causing the Breach incident (it could have easily been avoided either by sitting down with the leaders of the Faunus and coming to a mutually beneficial agreement, but when did politicians ever do the smart thing?), but that didn't mean that one of Ozpin's oldest friends and allies (and hers too, in all honesty) had to so willingly turn his back against him! So what if Ozpin liked to play the long game and kept his cards close to his chest, it was still a blatant betrayal of friendship and he knew it!

She continued to fume to herself as she reached her destination, knocking possibly a bit harder than necessary on the bulkhead door.

" _Enter,"_ she heard from the other side. Letting out a frustrated breath she smoothed down her blouse and skirt, because completely valid frustration was no excuse for forgetting basic neatness, and pushed the bulkhead open.

Ironwood was standing next to one of the reinforced windows with his back turned towards her, his trademark flask in his hand.

"I'm here now, James," she said tersely, "what was it you wanted to discuss?"

He sighed, still facing out the window. "No 'hello'?" he asked, lightly swirling his flask around, "Surely you haven't forgotten our time as students together, have you?" He turned around and grabbed a shot glass from his desk, pouring a bit of the dark, amber liquid from the flask into it before offering it to her, "I remember you being more personable back then."

She held her hand up, rejecting the liquor, "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not reminisce about the past right now; I have a lot of things to attend to back at Beacon, so let's just take care of whatever it was you called me here for."

"Very well…" He downed the shot himself and sat down in his chair behind the desk, motioning for Glynda to take the one on the other side. She did so, folding her arms over her chest and sending him her coldest of glares, often reserved when she was nearing the end of her patience. "I'll cut right to the chase than; I'm not sorry for how things have turned out."

Glynda harrumphed.

"I know how that sounds, but before you go and brand me a traitor, let me explain-"

"There's nothing to explain," she interrupted, "You were merely carrying out your duty as is befitting a loyal soldier of Atlas." She rose from her seat, "If you'll excuse me, I have other things that require my attention." She turned and was about to leave when she heard the distinct sound of a fist being smashed onto a desk.

"Damn it Glynda, just listen to me for a minute!" He accidentally spilled some of his flask during the touchy display. "...please?"

Glynda was tempted to just walk away without letting him try to explain his actions away with hollow patriotism or the like, it was certainly what he deserved.

However, she knew that deep down, he hadn't done anything out of malicious intent; she was just being spiteful, and she knew it. Whether for good or for ill, James always had the best interests Remnant and its citizens at heart.

She turned around again and huffily sat back down in her seat.

"This had better be good…," she warned him, letting the threat hang.

"Thank you," he sighed in relief. He poured himself another shot and gulped it down, clearing his throat. "Anyway, you and I both know that Ozpin is one of the smartest and most cunning men in the entire world, and we'd both follow him to Hell and back-"

He barely held back a wince at Glynda's slightly raised eyebrow, her way of saying "no shit, dumbass".

"-but he's still only human, and he makes mistakes just like the rest of us; I highly doubt he wanted the Breach to happen, much less all the casualties that stemmed from it."

She couldn't rightly deny this; even when he tended to hedge his bets Ozpin always seemed to have this knack for fixing a situation in his favor for the best possible results, but he wasn't omniscient by any means, and on rare occasions his risks tended come back to bite him.

Granted, she could count on one hand the number of times that happened, but that didn't make James's point any less valid.

"I'm not condemning him for that," the general clarified, "but in the past when he made a mistake it was usually on a much smaller scale: the incident with the Xiong family, Raven, Summer-"

"I can recall them well enough, _James_."

"Right, of course. My point is that this time his mistake was more costly than a single agent. Essentially, he allowed a known terrorist organization to release a horde of Grimm in the middle of a highly populated area, one that was supposed to be safe from that kind of incursion; there was going to be repercussions from that, regardless of his intentions."

"If you're trying to convince me to come over to your way of thinking, don't bother," she said.

"I know, and I'm not trying to. I just want you to look at things objectively here." Another shot. "That's all, I've said my peace. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry the council made him their scapegoat."

"I'm sorry too," she said, standing once again, "and for what it's worth, I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your new job." After that she headed for the door, intent on getting back to her post and hopefully getting affairs in order before the tournament rolled around.

 _How does Essmyrren do it?_ she wondered as she made her way back to Beacon, her normally regimented emotions now in a hopeless jumble.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Roman was _actually_ starting to get bored sitting in his cell, now. It had been fun for the first day or so, toying with the guards here (both the ones standing outside his cell and whoever was watching him through the camera they had set up), but after a while he'd run out of prison cliches and had taken to singing. This got old almost immediately since the only song he knew was a modified version of "100 Bottle of Dust", and he quickly discovered that he had a terrible singing voice.

The other prisoners threatened to shank him if he didn't stop. (He didn't know how they'd do that, but that one muscular fellow across the way was giving him a very uncomfortable stare that sent shivers up his spine, so he wasn't interested in finding that out.)

Still, it was the best sleep he'd had in months, now that he didn't have to worry about Cinder "accidentally" murdering him in his sleep because it was " _all part of the plan"_ or some bullshit like that.

He was about to indulge in the only worthwhile activity in this place (also known as "sleeping") when one of the guards rapped on the bars of his cell, holding what looked like a snazzy looking take out bag.

"Somebody left this for you," the guard said, holding the bag up.

Roman reluctantly got up and trudged over to the bars, and immediately perked up once he got a better look at it; on the side, in flowing calligraphy, was the word _Gavino's_ written in golden ink.

"Aw, you shouldn't have!" he said, reaching out for the bag, only for it to be pulled away from him at the last second.

"Not so fast," she said, "the rules say we have to check this before we give it to you." She set the bag on the ground and rifled through it, opening up containers and prodding the food with the included plastic utensils. After a couple minutes she picked the bag back up and, holding from the bottom, passed it through the bars to the incarcerated crook.

"Thanks for that," he quipped, yanking the bag from the guard's hands, "remind me to give this place a bad review for terrible service." The guard said nothing, having already walked away, much to Roman's annoyance; he wasn't about to start talking to himself, and the other prisoners weren't all that accommodating, so the guards were really the only people he he hold a substantial conversation with. Hell, he'd even settle for talking to _Neo_ , even though he did most of the talking and she hadn't made a single vocalization in the entire time he'd known her.

Opting to simply enjoy his meal in silence, he sat down on his cot and began unpacking the small feast: a small leg of lamb, soup that smelled herby, a couple bread-sticks, a cup of bisque, and some steamed vegetables rounded out the meal, and Roman dug in with aplomb. After going so long without real sustenance (whoever invented prison food should be drug out into the streets and shot with _all of the bullets!_ ) he didn't care about savoring it so much as finally feeling satisfied.

Ten minutes later he was wishing he'd taken the time to savor it a bit more than he had.

"Well, that was the highlight of my day," he said to no one, leaning back against the wall as he let his food settle. He reached for the bag to procure a napkin, finding some at the bottom. He grabbed one and was about to wipe his mouth when he noticed writing on it.

" _Be ready tomorrow, I'll be paying you a little visit,"_ it read in somewhat scratchy penmanship, with all the I's replaced with little ice cream cones.

He only knew one person who wrote like that.

Out of curiosity he repeated the process with the other napkins, finding only the first had anything on it. He looked up to make sure no one was watching him (the guards were embroiled in a discussion about a recent drill they had and the other inmates didn't care about him so long as he didn't try singing) and used the napkin with the message to wrap up the remains of his dinner and stuffed everything back in the bag it came from, casually leaving it in front of his cell.

"Be good little maids and clean that up, will you?" he told the guards, who understandably looked annoying at his apparent haughtiness. (One of them shot him the bird.) "I want the place looking nice in case I decide to entertain friends."

"Grr, keep an eye on him," one of the guards (the one who shot him the bird) grumbled, snatching up the bag and taking it away to be disposed of.

He then went back over to his cot and laid down, humming "100 Bottles of Dust" to himself to pass the time until tomorrow.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"You ever think about just settling down here?" Qrow asked openly, admiring the stark beauty of the Vacuo desert. He and his team were out here at the behest of the Vacuan government to help deal with a particularly bothersome pack of Grimm that had been harassing caravans meant to bring supplies to the various outposts scattered across the vast sea of sand.

"Not particularly," one of his two companion said, a dark skinned with an almost regal beauty to her. She ran both her hands through her coffee colored hair, "If I had a choice, I'd much rather live out the rest of my days in Mistral; good culture, good people, good wine...marginally good attitude towards the Faunus." She flexed her fingers on her left hand, causing sharp claws to form from her nails. "Mostly the wine, though."

"Yeah, I can see that." He ran a hand through his own mussy hair, glancing over to his other companion, "How about you, Cruz, Mistral or Vacuo?"

"Neither," the man said curtly. Unlike his two companions, who both donned light cloaks in lieu of their normal attire to better weather Vacuo's harsh, arid climate, he remained in the black duster he always wore. He was currently checking his weapon, a massive sword almost as long as he was tall, "I'd rather wander."

"Oh come on, there's _gotta_ be somewhere you wanna spend the rest of your days," Qrow pressed, "You know, get a stable job, buy a house, find a nice girl, raise a family, maybe dote on your grandkids eventual-" He stopped talking when he suddenly heard hissing in the distance. "Well well, it looks like our quarry's here." He reached under his cloak and pulled out his weapon, shifting the scythe open and holding it at the ready. "You ready Sheena?" he asked the woman.

Sheena unfurled her claws, designs that had once been invisible now lighting up yellow on her face (as well as the rest of her body, he knew, though these were hidden by the cloak) and lightning crackling in her open hands.

"Absolutely!" she nodded, a predatory gleam in her eyes.

Qrow looked to his other side, "...Cruz?"

The man nodded wordlessly. He also had his massive weapon at the ready, which was now split vertically from the tip of the blade to the guard of the hilt, six small missiles lined up and ready to fire.

Satisfied they were ready, Qrow finally turned towards the source of the hissing. Through the heat mirage he could see at least half a dozen Deathstalkers advancing towards them, each looking quite angry and closing in fast.

"So what do you think," he asked, "two apiece?"

"Good idea," Sheena said, "two for you guys, and the rest for me!" The woman then charged forward, launching blasts of lightning at the insect like Grimm.

Qrow and Cruz shared a look, Qrow shrugged, and they both followed their comrade.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _Quick Vol. 3 update, I went and looked up both Winter's and Qrow character designs on the RWBY Wiki (seriously the best resource for anyone writing RWBY fanfiction, especially since they have full episode transcripts and rather comprehensive character bios. Go check it out, you'll end up Bookmarking it in no time!) and I can work with both of them for Sins._ _And for those wondering, yes, I'm totally psyched that they got Vic "My poor vocal chords!/Don't call me short!" Migno-mana-mana-mana-mana-magna to voice Qrow, and yes, I will be keeping that casting choice for this story. Needless to say, since I'm basing a good deal of his character off of my own preconceptions about him and his official design, he probably won't be all that similar to HCH's version in Remnant's Reclaimer._

 _As for his partners, they're_ very _loosely based on recurring OC's I use, to the point where they only superficially resemble the originals. If you want to go check the originals out, they're in my story "Black Lagoon; Off Its Nuts" a.k.a. BL;OIN, and My Fairy by Themulchmeister (which you can find in the Favorites section on my profile). I'll hold off on talking about_ these _particular OC's here until they make their official appearance, since it gives me some time to refine their characters a bit._

 _I had fun playing around with Glynda and Ironwood, and there will definitely be more scenes devoted to them in the future._

 _Also, something seems to be happening on the Torchwick front. Better keep our eyes peeled, eh?_

 _Now, to address a review I received for the last chapter; while there is only one official ship in RWBY as of the end of Vol. 2 (that being Jaune Arc and Pyrrha Nikos; Blake/Sun hasn't been explicitly confirmed and is therefore technically unofficial, with Weiss/Neptune being only slightly more official due to it being clearly set up in the first half of Vol. 2.), I do think that Cinder falling in love with Crimson at first glance is a hilarious image (there are plenty of floating hearts and Desu sparkles). I can say with absolute certainty that it will never happen in the story proper, since I'm trying to stay true to the feel of the show, but if I get enough good ideas then maybe it'll be included in a collection of Bonus scenes after the story wraps itself up. We'll see what happens, but don't get your hopes up._

 _"Burning Thorn" came about because, in the episode "Painting the Town...", Yang and Ruby don't have a combination attack together. (And no, the "thorn" part of that name is not a reference to Crimson.) I wanted to remedy that, so this is what I came up with._

 _And since I forgot about this last time (shame on me), I have an idea for Taiyang's Semblance. I don't necessarily want to reveal it just yet, but if y'all really want to know, I'll talk about it at the end of the next chapter._

 _Anyway, that's all for this time. Remember, keep thinking about Crimson's next Nightmare session; I can promise you it'll be even more of a doosey than the last one!_


	12. Win some, lose some

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Wow, they were the biggest bunch of dorks I've ever met. ...next to Mercury, of course."

"You're just jealous."

"Oh yes, because reading nothing but comic books and talks to his dork friends about nothing but comic books. Yeah, color me uninterested."

"Now now, don't ruin the moment."

"...yes, Ma'am."

"Whevs."

"Good. Now, instead of arguing, why don't we go over what happened at the Festival, OK? Emerald, what is your assessment on the young Mr. Arc?"

"Well, he seems conflicted about Pyrrha, which I guess is good for your plans; he was pining for her until we got back to you guys, but could see the wheels turning in his head about _something_."

"Very well, see what you can find out about his and Miss Nikos' relationship."

"Speaking of which, what's the deal with Miss Cereal Box? I mean, we know she's a good fighter, but…."

"She was quite receptive to the ideas I posed to her, I'd say she be willing when the time comes."

"So assuming her and Scraggly are an item, what should I do?"

"Spend more time with him, the more intimate the better. And if you see an opportunity like what you did at the Festival, take it; show him you're just as thoughtful as she is."

"...do I have to? It sucks putting on that 'nice girl' act, and I only gave the kid back his comic to spite Merc here."

"Thanks for that, by the way. I was in the middle of reading it."

"Yeah, as in, your nose was in the middle of the pages while you pretended to take a nap!"

" _Children_ …. Now, how about the other two members of JNPR?"

"Nora seems alright. A bit spacy sometimes, but pretty much harmless."

"Lie Ren is the one to watch out for. He barely reacted to any of my jabs, and he seemed suspicious of me the whole time. ...Which reminds me, I need to go correct Ginger on a few things about her precious Mogar."

"At least put some pants on before you do," Emerald groaned, covering her eyes in disgust, "I can assure you, _no one_ wants to see that!"

"You didn't seem to mind ten minutes ago," he retorted, shamelessly turning around to face her.

She tugged the blankets higher in embarrassment.

Cinder snuggled closer to Emerald. "It's OK Sweetie," she cooed, "if he stays naked any longer I'll make him regret it." She snapped her fingers, causing a small flame to appear.

The threat was quite clear.

"Fine, I can take a hint." He grabbed his pants from the floor and hopped into them, going for his shotgun boots next. "You want I should try and recruit more people while I'm out?"

"If you want," she shrugged, "we only need a few more willing volunteers anyway."

"Just don't bring any of them here," cautioned Emerald, hugging Cinder close to her, "I don't like sharing."

Mercury waved halfheartedly as he headed out the door, now fully clothed. "I guess that makes one of us."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"See, I'm a nice teacher!" Crimson said as the team RWBY sat in the cafeteria at Beacon, the girls looking downcast and gloomy, "I got you all ice cream!"

"Yeah," Yang pointed up, "after beating us up; that's like parents taking their kid to the amusement park after they failed their combat school entrance exam."

"I don't think I can handle ice cream right now," Blake moaned, still holding her stomach where Crimson backhanded her.

Weiss just glare at the future version of her partner, eating her ice cream huffily as she did so.

"Om nom nom nom nom nom!"

Ruby didn't really care, just happy to have ice cream at all.

"*bark!*"

So was Zwei. (Crimson made sure it wasn't chocolate flavored.)

"Well, I just thought you guys deserved something after you let me beat up on you for so long," she admitted, "but on the plus side, you get to take it easy for the rest of the day! That's something, right?"

"I guess…." Yang sighed, "I would have liked to hang around the Festival some more, though…."

"Are you gonna eat that?" Ruby asked Blake, pointing to the untouched ice cream in front of the Faunus, to which Blake wordlessly pushed the dish over to the sweet-toothed teen.

"The other good news," Crimson continued, "is that I have a pretty good idea what you guys could do to improve before the tournament. Gonna need a little time to come up with a good curriculum for each of you, but I'm confident that shouldn't be too hard."

"And if it doesn't work?" Weiss asked, tactfully refraining from mentioning Crimson's last two attempts at "teaching" them.

The older woman shrugged, "Then at least I'll learn what _not_ to when I officially start at this place." She reached to steal a scoop from Ruby's (new) ice cream, only for her spoon to be skillfully swatted away. "...I taught you too well," she grumbled.

" _Iff yoh uhn fawt!_ " the petite crimsonette retorted, her mouth currently filled with the delicious frozen treat they were eating.

"Fine then," Crimson pouted, folding her arms, "I'll just work with you _last_. How about _that,_ you little-" She abruptly stopped before finishing her insult, something on the other side of the cafeteria catching her eye. "Hold that thought," she said with a devious twinkle in her eye, "I need to go make someone wet their pants." She got up from her seat and headed for a small crowd that gathered around one of the far tables.

When she got closer she could see what all the commotion was about: Team CRDL had once again managed to isolate Velvet Scarlatina from the rest of her team and were teasing her about her heritage (some being less subtle about it than others).

"Well go on," Cardin cajoled while Velvet fidgeted nervously, "show us! I mean, you're a rabbit, so there's gotta be a tail to go with those ears of yours-"

"Hey _Buddy_!" Crimson said with mock sweetness, casually slinging an arm over the boy's shoulder, "I hope you didn't forget about that bet we made, did you?"

Cardin gulped, freezing up at the sudden presence draped over his shoulders. He slowly turned his head to see an older version that pipsqueak Ruby, smiling sweetly at him.

For some reason this sent shivers of pure fight crawling up his spine.

He looked over to the rest of his team for support in this matter, only to find them booking it out of the cafeteria as fast as their legs could carry them. (It was like when they were attacked by that Ursa in the Forest of Forever Fall, only faster.)

Gulp again.

"N-no," he stammered, "I didn't forget." He was feeling super uncomfortable, like at any moment he was about get another pummeling by the woman hanging off him; the fact she she didn't stop smiling at him wasn't helping either.

"Oh, good!" She made a show of looking between him and Velvet. "So who's your friend?" she asked.

"I- ...I'm Velvet," Velvet said, more confused then scared at what was happening. "And you are…?"

"Crimson Thorne," Crimson said, using her free hand to shake Velvet's, "I'm the new teacher here. You just go ahead run along now, you're team's probably looking for you." She made little shooing motions with her hand. She then hugged Cardin tighter, "And don't worry about my good buddy Cardin here, I'll make sure he doesn't get lonely without you."

Still not sure what she was seeing was actually happening Velvet took the odd woman's advice, nodding once before presumably heading off to find the rest of her team.

"You should probably go find the rest of your team too," she said to Cardin once Velvet was out of earshot, "they're probably tripping over their own two feet without you around." She gave him a hearty pat on the back and began walking about to Team RWBY's table. "And I'll be making a visit to the tailor's office today," she called back, "so you might want to think about shaving your legs!"

"Don't you think you're going a little too far with that?" Blake asked as Crimson sat back down.

"Not in the slightest," she answered immediately. She conceded "Though the makeup I'm gonna have him wear once the dress is ready, _that_ might be going too far."

"Oh man, I can't wait to see that!" Yang chuckled, failing to hide her mirth at the prospect.

"Pffft!" Ruby snerked, imagining Cardin Winchester as a cartoonish stick figure in heavy mascara, lipstick, and fake eyelashes.

"*bark!*" barked Zwei, panting over an empty ice cream bowl.

"Anyway, go ahead and do whatever for now," Crimson said, "I'll catch up with you later after I compile my notes. Say...before curfew?" Everyone nodded. "Good! Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see a tailor about Cardin's dress."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Ozpin was looking over the medical readings he taken of Crimson on their first meeting, trying to decipher their meaning; while medical science wasn't his primary forte, he knew enough to make at least some sense of the document in his hands.

However, his eyes kept gravitating towards the part that said Crimson's Aura was practically non-existent. With how well she fought and how invincible she seemed while doing so, it was hard to believe that she could accomplish the feats she had didn't seem possible with merely her own physical prowess.

Still, that was for another day. There was also the matter of finding the mastermind Crimson claimed would bring about the downfall of a nation.

He set his Scroll down for the moment and activated his private terminal, the holographic screen materializing just above his desk. He keyed in the connection to the CCT and waited.

After a minute the CCT logo appeared on screen.

" _Welcome back, Professor Ozpin,"_ the A.I. greeted, " _Who do wish to contact?"_

"Qrow Branwen," he said, "currently in Vacuo."

" _Of course. One moment, please."_ A pixelated, spinning hourglass appeared at the bottom of the screen as the system made the connection.

Soon an image of Qrow appeared on the screen with a Vox bar under it.

" _...Ozzy, so good to hear your smiling voice!"_ Qrow said cheerily, " _You caught me at a good time, me and the guys just got done fighting a half a dozen Deathstalkers- well, Sheena did most of the work, Cruz and I just took out one apiece."_ The was a short pause. " _But I'm guessing you didn't call just to be social, did you?"_

"Accurate," the headmaster admitted. "I was wondering if you and your team would return to Vale, I could use your help with something."

" _...the city or just the country?"_

"To Beacon," he clarified. That was the one thing about Qrow that he could point to as a character flaw: his inability to take most things seriously. "It's about that ongoing matter we've been discussing."

" _Oh? Did the Queen finally show her hand?"_

"Not yet, but I now believe we may be able to force her hand and draw her into the open." There was silence on Qrow's end. Ozpin took that as his cue to continue, "I'd rather explain this in person, but let's say for now that I'm consulting with someone who may tip the scales in our favor."

" _And you trust this mystery person with this little Chess game?"_

"Absolutely." The smirk on his face reflected in his voice, "And I think you'll agree with me when you meet them." He leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of his coffee. "How soon can you make it back?"

" _Well, we just got paid our commission, but you know how Sheena is with alcohol...so I'm gonna say it'll be a few days at minimum before we make your shining metropolis a little brighter! Which reminds me,"_ he gasped, " _I'd better give Cruz a hand with our resident lush; she tends to get a bit destructive when sloshed. Hell, she gets that way normally!"_

"I'll let you get to that, then." With that he ended the call and picked his Scroll back up, this time keying up the footage of Crimson's first "fight" at Beacon.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Later that evening teams RWBY and JNPR were hanging out in the library playing Remnant: The Game, with Jaune and Nora playing against Ruby and Weiss. (Yang sat the round out, instead acting as the unofficial referee; she was still slightly demoralized from the right thrashing at Crimson's hand.) Ren and Blake were both reading, and Pyrrha had a textbook open on the table in front of her, occasionally making notes on her Scroll.

"Mwa hah hah hah hah hah!" Nora cackled, lightning crackling around her, "Your pitiful, fleshy armies are no match for my Robotic Legions! They are as Perfection itself, and soon, Vacuo shall fall under the iron fisted rule of Queen-"

"Trap card," Ruby, who was playing as Vacuo this round, interrupted, dissipating the lightning. She knocked over Nora Atlesian Knight miniatures, "Your robots get corroded by a rogue sandstorm and lose a turn."

"*sniff!*, I hate this game of emotions we play!" she wailed, rivers of tears falling from her eyes. She leaped onto Jaune's lap, hugging him tightly, "Hold me, Jaune!"

"Nor-wagh!" was his eloquent response as Nora's extra, imbalanced weight caused his chair to lean over and fall to the floor.

"It's your turn, Weiss," Ruby informed her partner, who was staring intently at her cards.

The heiress continued to stare at her cards, eventually smiling victoriously and holding a card up in dramatic fashion.

"Hah!" she declared, "I play...whatever this card is!" She pointed at the empty space where Jaune used to be across from her, "And my target is Mistral-"

"Can't," Yang interrupted, "that card can only be used against non-humanoid soldiers."

Weiss huffed, "Fine, then I'll just attack Ruby with all my forces-"

"Can't: she already played 'Natural Defenses', and that's augmented by Vacuo's bonus."

"Then I'll just play 'Giant Nevermore' against-"

"Can't: Vale's weak against Atlas, you'd lose the roll for sure."

"Then how about if I-"

"Can't. Just...trust me on this one."

"Then what _can_ I do?" she growled.

Yang looked over Weiss's cards, then at the board, then back to the card.

"...surrender?" she suggested weakly.

" _Why did I want to play this game again?!_ " she exclaimed, throwing her arms in the air (causing her hand to go flying), "It's too complicated!"

"Your turn now, Jaune," Ruby said as though Weiss hadn't just exploded, rearranging a couple of her cards.

"Gimme a second…!" he said, shakily sticking his finger over the lip of the table.

"Nora, let our leader get up," Ren said, turning a page in his book. (The sequel last month's best seller, called "Eleven Little Roosters".)

"OK!" she chirped, her mood once again doing a 180 from bawling sadness to unwaveringly cheerful. She glanced down to where said leader was still on the floor, "Your turn, Juane."

"Yeah, Nora, I know…"

"I wonder what the tournament will be like?" Pyrrha wondered, looking up from her textbook. "This will be my first time competing with a team rather than solely by myself."

"It's gonna be _awesome_!" Nora cheered, before giggling maniacally. "So many legs to break, so little time…!"

"Nora…."

"Oh, don't worry Ren, I wasn't gonna break _all_ their legs!" Weiss and Jane got into an argument over certain battlefield tactics ("It's a legitimate strategy!"). "Maaaaaybe just a couple. ...and that jerky, Dynamic Doofuses loving _Mercury_!"

"If I remember correctly," Ren explained, after shaking his head at his partner's hatred of the silver haired Haven student, "there is a Singles bracket and a Teams bracket, both with their own challenges."

"We _have_ to enter the Teams bracket!" Ruby declared. "We're both awesome teams, and if we're lucky, we might end up facing each other; wouldn't that be great?"

"And not to brag," Yang bragged, "but we've been working on a new combo move that'll knock your socks off!"

"What move?" Blake asked, looking up from her book. Having been in the middle of her brief experience as a bird, she didn't know that the rest of her team had already tried out Ruby's brainchild.

"I'll tell you about it when we get back to the room," she assured her partner, winking conspiratorially, "Can't let the competition know our secrets, after all."

"That sounds cool," Jaune said, playing a card, "By the way, I just destroyed Ruby's forces; I own Vacuo now."

"Not again!" she wailed, rivers of tears streaming from her eyes. (She flopped dramatically on the table.)

"I wonder if we'll have to fight Team SSSN?" Weiss mused.

Nora nudged the heiress in the shoulder. " _Ooh_! Afraid you might have to fight your _boyfriend_?" she asked, waggling her eyebrows.

Weiss just shot bubbly berserker an icy glare.

The slightly blush on her cheeks sort of took away from the menace, though.

Yang nudged Weiss's other shoulder, stating "That sure is a _Weissy_ glare, isn't it?"

She was smacked in the back of her head with a rolled up magazine for her troubles.

"OW!" she cried, looking behind her, "Who the-?"

She wasn't expecting to suddenly see Crimson standing there tapping her foot, her arms folded and her one eye narrowed in irritation.

"...that was awful," she said, Yang squirming uneasily under her gaze. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Um...I surrender?" the blonde managed.

"When'd you get here?" Ruby wondered, the board momentarily forgotten. This thankfully distracted Crimson from her rage at Yang('s bad pun).

"Just now," she said, "I only just got done having a conversation with Dr. Oobleck a couple minutes ago; I forgot how much the man could talk…." She took out her flask (newly refilled) and gulped some of it down.

"I wasn't aware you knew the good Doctor," Pyrrha said, turning towards the newcomer. "Are you a colleague of his?"

The girls of RWBY blanched, their eyes going wide, blank, and with pencil scratch borders. With all the things that ended up happening after meeting her, none of them thought to plan a backstory for the future Ruby. Whether it was ultimately needed was debatable, but better to be on the safe side in case the Future didn't like her talking about it too much.

"I used to go to this school," the older woman said, "way back when. Then a bunch of shit happened and..." She shook her head, as if clearing away her thoughts, "Point is, I came to fetch Team RWBY here; I'm helping them get in shape for the tournament, so I'm gonna need to borrow them for a moment." Before any of the teens could react Crimson grabbed Weiss be her collar and began dragging her away. This caused the rest of Team RWBY to come to their senses and follow their teacher out of the library.

" _What is it with you people and always dragging_ ME _?!"_ Weiss cried, before the group disappeared out the doors.

"Did...she look like an older version of Ruby to anyone else?" Jaune asked after a minute.

"Possibly," Pyrrha agreed, nodding hesitantly, "though it was hard to tell while she was wearing that eyepatch."

"Eh, probably just an optical illusion," Nora shrugged, hastily grabbing Weiss's discarded cards. She added them to her hand, then pointed emphatically at her team leader, "Alright Jaune Arc, prepare you Kingdom for battle!"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Alright," Crimson said (she was still dragging Weiss behind her), "so here's the deal; Blake, I'm gonna work you first, since your problem needs the most direct attention."

"I'm not _that_ predictable-" she protested, only for Crimson to hold up her finger.

"As someone from the future, take it from me that you're not at the level you were when I knew you." She continued, pointing at Yang next, "As for you, _Sis_ , we need to get you used to thinking things through a bit more in battle."

"I do fine," the brawler scoffed, "Name one time punching without thinking has been a bad thing for me."

Crimson held up two fingers in turn, "Your fight with _me_ -" Yang scowled. "-and your fight on the train the White Fang used for the Breach." She paused for a moment, letting her sister absorb the information. "If you let yourself get too riled up then you open yourself up for something worse than a cocky bitch beating the shit out of you, and I don't want to see that happen to you again."

"'Again'?" Yang said, raising an eyebrow.

"I meant _at all_ ," the older Ruby clarified, possibly a little too fast. "I'm...just a little exhausted from talking with Dr Oobleck." She once again sampled her flask. "Ahh…! So, until the tournament, I'm going to call you 'Babe' whenever possible."

Yang twitched.

"For training purposes only," she added, and Yang could have sworn she saw the smallest traces of a grin on Crimson's face.

"Would you _please_ put me down already?" Weiss asked, her arms folded huffily while her heels dragged on the floor. "My legs still work, you know!"

"Whatever Her Majesty says!" Crimson mocked, dropping the heiress unceremoniously on her ("Oof!") behind. "Would Her Majesty like anything else?"

Weiss grumbled unintelligibly.

"And while I've got your attention, after I'm through with Blake and my sister, I'll help you with your whole 'Error 403: Code not found' thing."

"I don't know what that means," she intoned, rubbing her sore rump.

"I'm gonna help you to handle surprises better." Crimson turned to Ruby. "And finally, I'll show Ruby how to modify Crescent Rose so she doesn't explode in her face."

"That happened to you?" Ruby wondered, a question mark hovering over her head.

Crimson bopped her fingers together sheepishly, "...I sorta tried experimenting with using a higher yield Dust in Cres's ammo, and...boom."

"How much boom?" Yang asked.

"I needed to rebuild a good portion of Cres's chassis," she admitted, "...and the room I tried it in."

"Ouch."

Crimson sighed longingly, patting her Cres where it hung on her belt. "Good times…."

Given her older self's track record, Ruby sought clarification. "So...my Cres _isn't_ gonna explode after the modifications?"

"Hopefully, so long as we don't mess with the ammo too much."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Neo didn't remember there being so many guards at the last place she busted Roman out of.

Granted, the last place she busted him out of was this little police station that was really more of a checkpoint than a functioning hub, but still! And it wasn't like she hadn't broken into worse places, like that warehouse they got those Paladin mechs from; that place was _much_ more heavily guarded than _this_ place was. ...it was actually a little disheartening, how little the Atlesian military cared about their security; the podunk little police checkpoint had better security than this place did, and they were-

Focus! Rescue Roman first, bitch about not getting a satisfactory challenge out of rescuing him later.

She peeked around the corner again, taking stock of the entrance. Fairly exposed, offering little in the way of cover between it and her current position. The doorway itself was empty, save for the web of lasers crisscrossing it, with a guard on either side. Past the lasers she could just make out the more traditional metal bars of a prison cell, though from this distance she couldn't tell if it was the one housing Roman or not.

Honestly, the guards were the biggest problem; once they were dealt with the rest should be smooth sailing, so to speak. She took out a borrowed Scroll (she didn't actually own one herself, what with how easy the devices were to track) and sent a message to an ally (read: stooge) she recruited for the mission. Their part was simple, but necessary.

And like clockwork, not thirty seconds passed before her partner (lackey) came running up to the guards, shouting provocatively at them and tossing some rocks in their direction before booking it in the other direction. This succeeded in draw the pair of soldiers away from their post, allowing her privacy to access the door controls.

Looking around once more to make sure no one else was around she dashed over to the building, making sure that she avoided the streetlights as she did.

Once there, she focused on the next step to getting her Sweet Baboo (Shut up! It's the cutest name ever, so there!) out of the klink: the keypad. It was fairly standard as far as keypads went; ten buttons labeled 0 to 9, with a display above it that showed what numbers were pressed. Thankfully, she'd had the foresight to watch the keys the guards pressed when she gave them the "care package" for Roman earlier.

Her mind wandered to her boss/secret crush, thinking about how he'd react to being broken out slightly ahead of schedule; the original plan was to wait a day before breaking in, but circumstances had changed in rapid succession and she needed Roman and his knack for not getting skewered, or worse: caught! (She'd heard rumors that prisons didn't serves ice cream, and she wasn't interested in finding out if they were true or not, thank you!)

Shaking away the disturbing thoughts of an ice-creamless existence she entered the code, watching the lasers disappear a moment later. She then strolled casually into the building, twirling her parasol jauntily as she made her way around the place looking for Roman. Many of the other cells were occupied, and as she walked by the inmates would make cat calls at her. She mostly tuned it out, occasionally shooting someone the bird if they were being _extra_ annoying.

She must have been in here for a good five minutes before another guard rounded the corner and leveled his gun at her.

"Stop right there!" he ordered. "You've got a lot of explaining to do, _Missy_ , so start talking!"

Neo would have laughed if she wasn't more concerned with finding her ice cream ticket. Looking wholly unconcerned that a gun was pointed at her, she smiled coquettishly, swaying her hips as she sashayed up to the guard.

She then leaned forward, closed her eyes, and puckered her lips.

The guard blinked, taken aback by the petite woman's behavior.

Things got even stranger for him when she opened one eye and shyly beckoned him forward with her finger. Now more curious than cautious the guard hesitantly leaned forward, involuntarily lowering his gun.

Neo then burst apart like glass, the guard falling face first onto the floor. She now stood behind the dead guard, wiping the blood off her cane sword.

Surprisingly, all the cat calls stopped after this.

Deciding her weapon was clean enough, she slid it back into its sheath and resumed her search for Roman.

It took her about ten more minutes to finally locate his cell. She peered inside, hoping to find her boss ready and waiting to break out, but instead found him on his cot, out like a light and sounding like that one Lieutenant's stupidly large chainsaw as he snored. She tapped her parasol on the bars to get her attention, but this prompted no reaction from him other than a mumble about "five more minutes…" and him shifting his position slightly. Now frustrated, she swung at the bars harder, which yielded the same result.

After silently (yet dramatically) fuming for a moment, she took a shard of yellow Dust from a pouch she wore under her coat, tossed it next to Roman, and leveled her parasol at it.

She fired.

"Hegurguhgurk!" he said, his muscles spasming at the sudden, rude awakening, falling to the floor as the spasms passed. "What the-?" he wondered, before spying Neo waving to him from outside the bars. (Any sign of frustration had completely evaporated.) "Oh, it's just you."

Neo grimaced at him, putting her hands on her hips.

"You said the breakout was going to happen tomorrow!" he protested, "Your note said 'Be ready tomorrow', not 'be ready in five minutes'!"

She held her hand out expectantly.

"Well, _obviously_ I don't have it anymore; I had to get rid of it before the guards found it!"

She raised an eyebrow, as if to say "And…?".

"And if the guards found your note," he said, condescendingly, "then you and I wouldn't be having this conversation right now, would we?"

She shrugged.

" _So anyway_ ," Roman said, bristling at the diminutive woman's casual indifference, "what's your plan for getting me out of here? These bars aren't exactly made of paper, you know."

Neo grinned and tapped her forehead, producing another Dust crystal from behind her back. This time it was a red one, which she set in the bars and stepped back. She shot it, and it erupted in a ball of super hot flames. Then she tossed a blue crystal into the middle of the red hot bars and shot it, causing ice to form. Then she simply skipped over to the bars and gave one a light tap with her parasol.

It immediately shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Not bad!" he praised, earning a shy grin from the tri-toned girl, "I'll have to remember that the next time I need to get past something metal."

Neo fought the blush that threatened to consume her cheeks as she motioned for the professional thief to hurry the Hell up now that he was free.

"As soon as I get my things," he said, decidedly _not_ getting his butt in gear, "those bastards locked up Melodic Cudgel and a few other little surprises I had on me."

Neo smacked her head as she pointed emphatically in the general direction of the exit.

"Hey, I have a reputation to keep," he explained, "and my bag of tricks is part of that." He gestured to his attire, "You don't think I dress like this for _fashion_ , do you?"

Neo looked like she was actually pondering whether Roman thought his outfit looked good.

"That was a rhetorical question," he deadpanned, "now let's go find my things, _then_ we can leave."

She pouted and turned on her heel so she wasn't facing him anymore, her nose stuck in the air.

"...fine," he relented, "we can get ice cream. Happy?"

She made a show of thinking his offer over, then turned and nodded at him, smiling happily.

"Good. Now let's get moving."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _I'm quite proud of the Remnant: The Game (or R:TG, as I like to abbreviate it) bit. I don't know why, but it's just so_ fun _to play around with it and just...you know? Point is, it's probably one of my favorite scenes from something of mine._

 _And if I may take a moment to editorialize, I'd like to talk about references and how they're used in RWBY fanfiction. Now, I have no problem with references in and of themselves, nor do I take issue with them being used in RWBY fics, since the show makes many subtle references to other shows and tropes (at one point Ren is holding a bottle of "Samurai Shampoo), and many not so subtle ones to other Rooster Teeth productions. (Volume 2, episode 1. If you watch Red vs, Blue, you'll know that of which I speak.) My problem is when authors insert references (a good 99% of them being Anime related in some fashion) willy nilly, with little to no thought on how to make them work within the context of the series, or if they'll even fit organically into the series at all! I know RWBY takes a lot of inspiration from Anime, but that doesn't mean using typical Anime words and phrases makes sense in a world where A.) everybody speaks English pretty much exclusively, and B.) there's no evidence that Anime as a concept even exists in RWBY. **It's not an Anime, and it just wasn't designed as one either.**_ _Now there are some cases where the constant shoehorning of Anime somehow manages to kind of work, such as the Reactsverse stories by ElfCollaborator, (of which my story "Vivi's Adorable Misadventure" is canon to), but often times it just ends up clumsy, distracting, and slightly insulting. At the end of the day, RWBY is a work of incredible imagination by a man who quite literally put his all into it. Personally, I do the best I can to make the best possible stories and I sincerely hope that others do the same, if only to honor Monty Oum's legacy and the wishes of his peers and loved ones._

 _OK, editorial over! Now back to your regularly scheduled Author's Note._

 _I also had lots of fun with the Neo bit for this chapter, but that's nothing new at this point. If you're looking for a writing challenge then try writing from Neo's perspective: no italicized inner thoughts, no quotation marks, nothing but pure narration._

 _So if you've made it this far, then it's impossible for you not to have noticed the scene with Cinder, Emerald and Mercury at the top of the page. I don't quite remember where I got the idea for the three of them to have as intimate a relationship as portrayed here (and yes, I'm well aware that Emerald is often characterized as "Dere Dere" for Cinder in a lot of fanfiction), but for some reason it just seems to fit the characters. ...though Cinder is probably the one who corrupted the other two. (Side note: this is about as "sexy" as Sins is ever going to get.) Miss Fall is also the one who wears the pants (Oxymoron!) in this Manage é trois._

 _Also, that move Yang was bragging about? Keep your eyes peeled in later chapters. Just saying._

 _Anyway, that'll about do it for this chapter. See y'all next time!_


	13. A REALLY painful reminder

" _Blake, calm down!" she pleaded, dodging the Faunus's furious swipes. It was getting difficult, what with how every errant swing caused another gouge in the walls, further threatening the already decrepit building they were in to collapse on them. She saw Weiss out of the corner of her eye, slumped against what used to be a banister with gaping wound in her side. She was the first victim of this, and if things continued to deteriorate, wouldn't be the last._

 _Yang was nowhere in sight, off keeping the robots busy while the three of them searched the building for anything useful. If she were here now, or if Cres hadn't been left back in the base, this fight would have been over before it began._

" _Snap out of it!" she shouted, "you're stronger than this, don't lose to some stupid toxin!"_

 _Leave it to machines run solely on logic to come up with the perfect way to counter the Faunus: turn them it into impromptu sleeper agents by causing the infected Faunus to revert to a violent, primal behavior. They used gas of some kind, which only affected the Faunus that were exposed to it; humans seemed to be perfectly immune to the stuff. This gas also had an erratic incubation period, so no two cases were ever similar, and the symptoms mimicked that of the common cold, so there was no easy way to tell if someone was infected; what made matters worse was that the toxin was always mutating (according to the Dead Fantasy scientific staff) so there wasn't a way to treat it once the effects took hold._

 _Many of the infected Faunus were "put down" soon after they started killing people._

 _And leave it to Blake to lie about being exposed to the gas right before they got sent out on a mission._

 _Blake got in a lucky strike and knocked her into a wall, quickly pouncing on her and grabbing her by the neck, squeezing as hard as possible._

" _B-...Blake!..." she wheezed, trying to pry Blake's hands free of her windpipe._

 _It was a losing battle, and soon she began to see black creep into the edges of her vision._

 _Her mind went back to when they heard that Sun Wukong got infected. He'd been going for a routine checkup when the infection took hold, and thankfully one of the doctors managed to inject him with a sedative before be became too violent to handle. He was thrown in a holding cell after that, howling and screeching upon awakening._

 _They managed to keep him contained for three days before he broke his neck banging his head against the walls._

 _Suddenly, the blackness faded and she could breath again, coughing as her lungs tried to rapidly replenish the air that had been used up. The reason for this, she noticed, was that Blake was now holding her head, yowling in anger and pain. She started bashing her head against the ground, presumably in an attempt to get whatever was causing the pain to stop._

" _No!" she wheezed at the top of her lungs, tackling the Faunus to the ground, images of Blake's skull cracking open like an egg bombarding her mind, "Get a grip already!"_

 _Whether it was the tackle or just some really warped logic Blake appeared to be snapped back to her senses, at least temporarily, which unfortunately meant that she went right back to mindlessly lashing out at anything within reach._

 _The "anything" in this case being the person holding her to the ground at the moment._

 _Blake resumed clawing at her teammate, snarling as she did her best to tear Ruby apart limb from limb. Ruby managed to hold the Faunus back, but with Blake's rage enhanced strength she didn't know how much longer she could hold out._

 _What she wouldn't give to have Crescent Rose with her right now._

 _She tried to shake her former teammate off of her, but she was easily overpowered and slammed back into the ground, knocking her head against a bit of debris. As Ruby's head swam Blake bit down on her face, managing to rip Ruby's eye completely out of its socket. The pain was so intense that, combined with the damage to her throat, she couldn't even manage to scream. In her 19 years on Remnant she couldn't recall a single thing that felt worse than this pain right now._

 _Blake was about to take another bite out of her when she suddenly stopped, the tip of a rapier sticking out of her forehead, blood dripping down onto Ruby's face as Blake stared wide eyed into nothing._

 _Then she slumped forward as the thin blade was pulled from her skull, dead. Above her corpse stood Weiss, holding a bloody Myrtenaster at her side while holding her jacket over her wound with her free hand._

" _You OK?" she asked, to which Ruby managed to nod, wincing as the motion caused pain to shoot through the wound. "Good, then let's get going; the last thing we need is a squad of Knights or a Paladin after...can you stand?"_

 _Ruby nodded, leaning against the wall as she picked herself up, trudging over to her partner. She held a hand over the now empty crevice in her skull, the pressure somewhat helping her manage the pain that came with it. As she reached the former heiress she looked back at the deceased Faunus. "Do you think we should bring the body with us?" she asked._

 _Weiss shook her head, "If this happened back at the base I'd say yes, but we're not there right now; we're supposed to carry on with our mission if this happens in the field, and it's not like Blake had any family left. At least, none that she mentioned…"_

" _Fine," the young reaper relented, "just give me a minute." She walked back to her fallen comrade and knelt beside her, gently closing her eyes before searching for her Scroll-_

 _Blake's eyes immediately snapped back open, now glowing a vibrant red. She swiped at Ruby faster than the crimsonette could follow, her claws cutting out a set of deep gashes the younger girl's stomach. The force of the blow sent her barreling into a still intact support column, a sickening crack sounding upon impact._

 _Wisps of pitch black shadows licked about Blake's body, which was now crouched on all fours, growling viciously. She leaped straight for Ruby, fangs to bear, tearing into her throat and-_

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _ **to be continued...**_

 _ **[insert Vincent Price style evil laugh here]!**_


	14. Entropy

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Crimson awoke with a start, shooting upright and bringing one of her pistols to bear in a flash. She was breathing heavily and drenched in sweat, leaving a damp silhouette where she was laying.

 _God...DAMMIT!_ she swore to herself, her senses flooding back in a wave of comprehension. She was in her own room at Beacon Academy, after a grueling day of training for the Vytal Festival tournament. She and Team RWBY had been working hard for days now, and tomorrow would be the first day of the tournament; she could finally see the fruits of her labors.

And as an added bonus, none of her Team would die this time around.

She sighed, turning over the small weapon in her hand. "I thought I was done with these damn dreams…," she said to herself, putting her gun away. This always happened when she awoke from one of her nightmares, the product of the Commander's intense training and the constant threat of getting ambushed in the middle of the night.

After that painful, twisted memory on her first night here she'd had a fairly pleasant nights' sleep, awaking to sunlight streaming through the window instead of the lingering images of her past. She couldn't remember having any dreams one way or the other these past few nights, which was a wholly welcome change of pace. Maybe it was the intense training she was putting RWBY through or something, she just couldn't give an answer as to why her demons suddenly decided to leave her alone.

But, of course, there was a reason why she couldn't have nice things.

A glance at the time on her Scroll told her that it was close to dawn; too early for anyone else to be up and about, but too late to go back to sleep with how wired she was right now. She tossed her meager covers off (they essentially amounted to a single, very thin sheet) and headed over to the small half bath by the room's door. She splashed some water on her face and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sensation of the cool liquid.

When she opened them again she was greeted by Blake Belladonna, her eye glowing red and a trickle of dried blood running down her forehead where she'd been skewered.

"Fucking fuck," she sighed, grabbing a towel from the rack, "It was too much to hope that you'd fucked off for good, wasn't it?"

 _You're forgetting you mission_ , the specter told her, her unblinking eyes laser focused on Crimson's face, _You're supposed to be making sure_ I _don't happen...or do you_ want _to see all that death and destruction a second time?_

"I'm working on it," she protested, taking a change of clothes out of her dresser (Weiss insisted she have spare clothes) and heading down to the showers by the Gym. The specter followed her, "You try searching an entire country's worth of people and information and tell me if you have any better luck finding the cause of the apocalypse."

 _I didn't know horsing around with your past self and her friends counted as "searching"._

"I'm teaching them how to fight," she explained, turning a corner, "with what's coming, they need all the help they can get."

 _And yet none of that effort will matter when the machines begin slaughtering people because you were too busy ignoring the bigger picture to tinker with You from the past._ The specter continued as Crimson futilely stuck her fingers in her ears in an attempt to ignore it, _First it's just a few deaths here and there as people ignore the fact that Atlesian Knights supposed to_ prevent _casualties because, hey, it's only criminals and terrorists, right? Then, the genocide comes out of nowhere, the people completely unprepared for it because they were too busy treating the symptoms of the disease instead of finding the cause and fixing it._ Crimson had now taken to going "Lalalalala!". _Slowly but surely Humanity is pushed back and is put permanently on the defensive. Then, the machines get the bright idea to use chemical weapons to neutralize the Faunus, one of the few advantages against them we still had, in the most horrific way possible; making the humans do their job for them, turning friends into instant enemies for no other reason than to get them to start killing each other._

By this point Crimson had reached the showers and chucked her stuff unceremoniously into an empty stall and headed into the one next door, hurriedly cracking the water on full blast before she even started to strip.

 _That was when it started, wasn't it?_ the specter asked as crimson tossed away the last of her garments and let the scalding water run over her, _Back when the infection first affected me, that was when_ you _started becoming a team killing fucktard, right?_

"Shut up…"

" _Ruby Rose", the prodigy Huntress who was accepted into Beacon two years ahead of schedule, Ozpin's ace in the hole, Little Miss Team Leader, Summer's daughter...the biggest piece of disappointing bullshit in all of Remnant._

"Shut up."

 _It was me, then that squad of soldiers you took to try and take out that Paladin factory, then half of JNPR when they tried to rescue you, then those refugees you were supposed to escort back to the Tower, then Yang..._

"Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup-"

 _Then that new_ "team" _of yours you used to try and replace your old one. All those people had one thing in common; you were the one who was supposed to keep them safe. It was your responsibility to make sure they didn't die, and look at how well_ that _turned out, huh? Their blood is on your hands; It's. All. Your. Fault-_

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Crimson slammed her fist into the partition that separated stalls, making a hole right through to the other side. "I'm working on it, OK?" she said as she retracted her fist, "So just _fuck off_ and let me fix the future in peace!"

When she looked up again the specter of Blake had vanished.

"Well," she sighed, "time to get serious." She turned off the water (it hadn't really been helping much, all things considered) and reached around the other, undamaged partition for her towel, beginning the process of drying herself off. "Time to have another chat with Ozpin…."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Stop!" Emerald held up her hand, putting her gun back in its holster, "you're doing it all wrong."

Across the ring, Jaune let Crocea Mors' shield fall to his side as it folded back into its compact form.

"But that's how you're supposed to hold it," he protested, "arm across your front and the shield facing outward, right?" He mimed out the action.

"True," she said, trying to to grimace at his poor form, "but your footing is all wrong." She walked over to the scraggly Huntsman, "You've got to brace yourself with your foot or else…." As she reached him she gave Jaune a light but firm shove, sending the boy toppling backwards. "You see?"

"Yeah," he groaned, rubbing his sore backside, "I get the picture." The mint haired girl reached down and offed him a hand up, which he gladly accepted.

After helping him to his feet, Emerald knelt down and manipulated Jaune's legs into the proper position, the blond Knight's face rouging slightly at the touch.

"There!" she said satisfied with her work. She jogged back over to her original position and drew one of her guns once more. "Let's try this again!" she called, aiming at still blushing Jaune, "Defend!"

Shaking his mind clear at the command, Jaune held his shield at the ready and waiting for Emerald to attack.

"...Hold it at more of an angle," she said, forgoing her attack in favor of one more instruction.

"Uh, why?" he wondered.

"Just do it!" she snapped. Jaune did so, looking unsure but compliant. "OK, here I go!" She called, pulling the trigger.

Jaune squealed as bullets ricocheted off the shield.

"Did you feel anything?" Emerald asked.

Jaune thought for a moment. "...No, not really."

"And that's why you angle the shield." She walked back over, flicking out the blade on her gun. "Now think fast!" She swung at him, Jaune reflexively bringing his shield to bear, parrying the strike and bashing the weapon aside. Emerald quickly drew her second gun and, in a quick, fluid motion, had the second blade against his neck. "Well," she said, "at least your reflexes are good."

"Y-yeah…," he gulped, "thanks to Pyrrha."

"She a good teacher?"

"I-I guess. I mean, before I came here I could barely hold my own against my little sister, and now I'm defending the city from the Grimm-! Um...can you, maybe…?"

"Oh, sure." She put her guns away and wiped her brow. "Anywho, I think that's enough practice; let's get back to our room before they start missing us, OK?"

"Yeah, good idea." Jaune folded up his shield and grabbed a water bottle, taking a sip. "Hey, thanks for helping me out like this," he said, "I know Pyrrha will appreciate getting some time to train by herself instead of worrying about me."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate the effort."

Jaune smiled at the thought as the two of them made their way back to their respective dorm rooms. Emerald had asked him the other day if he wanted to train with her in the morning before everyone else woke up. He thought it would be a good way to get some extra prep in before the tournament so he said yes, and for the last few days they'd gotten up before around the crack of dawn and helped each other improve their fighting. (Though Emerald ended up doing most of the helping in the end.)

And while he'd probably have to come clean to his teammates about this at some point, the thought of seeing Pyrrha's face when he suddenly improved one and a half fold the next time they sparred proved too irresistible.

He figured it was the least he could after for her after everything she did for him.

"So, same time tomorrow?" he asked.

Emerald shook her head. "The tournament's tomorrow," she reminded him, "Besides, I can't think of anything else I need to work on. Can you?" He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "See? And anyway, I think we should probably focus on training with our _own_ teams for a bit."

"Ooh, good point," he conceded. They walked in silence for a bit before reaching Emerald's temporary dorm room. "So, um," he wondered, "are you going to compete in the Singles or Teams bracket?"

"Probably the Singles," she answered, shrugging, "my team's kinda jerks. ...well, Mercury is. Cinder's cool, but sometimes the whole 'I'm so cultured and proper' things gets a bit annoying. And I _still_ haven't seen our fourth since we got here."

"Oh. Well, Pyrrha, Ren, Nora and I were gonna do the Teams one, so at least we won't have to worry about our teams fighting each other." Jaune shuffled nervously, unsure of how to end the conversation gracefully. "Um...see you later?" he finally decided on.

"Maybe; like I said, I'm probably going to be training with my team, so I'll probably be pretty busy for a while." She unlocked the door with her Scroll and, smiling, gave Jaune a friendly wave goodbye. "Good luck," she said, disappearing behind her door.

Jaune stood outside the room for a minute before he realized that his team would be waking up soon. Checking his Scroll to make sure it wasn't too late he hurried back to his own room, hoping none of his friends decided to be particularly light sleepers today.

On the other side of the door, however…

"And where have you been, young lady?" Mercury pressed, "Your mother and I have been waiting up all night for you!" He put on a look of mock horror, "...where you out with _a boy_?"

"Fuck off!" she retorted, flopping down on their shared bed, " _I_ am doing my job; how many 'converts' did you bring in recently, hmm?"

"A couple," he shrugged, "I wasn't really keeping track of the exact number."

She wasn't buying it for a second, "It was zero, wasn't it?"

"Guilty as charged," he answered unashamedly. He held out his arms limply in front of him, "Go on then, arrest me, Officer Sustrai. Or are you too busy making kissy faces with Scraggly Boy?"

He received a pillow to the face for his efforts.

"Why do I put up with you again?" she griped.

"...because I'm dynamite in the sack?" he ventured.

Emerald was about take a wild swing at her partner when " _Children._ " sounded behind them. They both turned to find Cinder walking (though "strutting" would be a more apt term) out of the bathroom, a damp towel wrapped around her hair and wearing her Haven Academy uniform.

"What have I told you two about bickering?" she asked, giving both of them a hard stare. "We're almost at the tipping point for our operation; we can't afford to let our emotions get the better of us now."

"Hey," Mercury protested, "my emotions are perfectly-"

Cinder focused her glare on the silver haired boy. "You're antagonizing," she stated, "which I normally wouldn't have a problem with if you two were in public since it helps with our hiding in plain sight, but when it's just the two of you there's no excuse."

"Sorry…," Emerald said penitently.

"I know you are, Darling, but I'm not the one in need of an apology." She nodded her head towards Mercury.

"If you say so, Boss," Mercury said, "I would have forgiven her anyway, but-"

"You apologize too," she said, an edge creeping into her voice, "I heard everything, and you were the one who started this."

"Aw, do I have to?" he whined.

"Yes you do, and neither of you are leaving this room until you properly make up." She unwrapped the towel and tossed it aside, letting her hair fall naturally around her shoulders (and in front of her left eye). "Now I'm going out for a bit, and when I come back I expect to see the both of you getting along. Otherwise…." She let the threat hang, strutting out the door to wherever it was she was going.

Mercury and Emerald started at the door, then at each other.

"Well?" Emerald asked expectantly.

"Well what? It's not like we _actually_ have to do anything, Cinder's probably gonna be gone a good while with...whatever she's doing." He laid down on the bed and dropped a pillow (he still hung onto the one Emerald threw at him) over his eyes, "Let's _not_ apologize and just say we did."

"Whatever." She got up and grabbed a towel, "I'm gonna take a shower, don't bother coming to join me."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Despite becoming something of a semi-regular occurrence since she first came to Beacon, Crimson could never get used to taking the long walk up to Professor Ozpin's office (not counting the time she was escorted there by Glynda after kicking Yang and Cardin's asses, she was still high on adrenaline from that fight). Ever since getting called up there after fighting that woman in the CCT the action had always carried with it a small sense of dread that turned out to be impossible to shake. Things only got worse when Commander Goodwitch established the Dead Fantasy resistance in the CCT tower instead of better; people would die and she'd get called up to the Commander's office, piling even more shit onto the already decent sized mounted that came with it.

Nobody could properly appreciate the conflict she was going through right now. At least, no one she could think of either now or in the future…

It didn't help that she _knew_ that Ozpin was one of the most personable human beings on the entire planet, old habits were just hard to kick.

 _I hope he's actually awake_ , she thought to herself, _or else I just made this whole trip for nothing._ She reached the elevator that lead up to office and stepped inside, hitting the top of only two buttons on the inside. As the door closed and the box started to rise she couldn't help but think that elevators were one of the worst places to be when you were running from a horde of killer robots; they were slow as fuck and way too easy to trap people inside. If you managed to climb through the emergency hatch then it was a one way trip higher up, and only served to delay the inevitable at that point. If you did make it through, well...that was one less coffin the Undertaker had to worry about making.

Not that Undertaking was really a necessary job when all that was left of you was a puddle…

She shook the overly morbid thought from her head and focused on the reason she was doing this in the first place: finding the person responsible from the future going wrong and shooting them between the eyes before they could do that.

Not surprisingly, she hadn't been given that information before they sent her back in time; in the chaos of the Robot Uprising people were more focused on staying alive than keeping detailed records of how the calamity went down, and if some crazy bastard _had_ done that, they'd never been found. What people _did_ know (or at least reasonably suspect) was that whatever happened, happened either during or immediately following the Vytal Festival tournament. Penny was suspected to be a major factor in it, though Crimson always had her doubts about that. Regardless of Penny's involvement, someone found a way to make the Atlesian Knights self aware (not to mention bloodthirsty), or else they just spontaneously overrode their own programming and decided "We don't need to listen to those fleshy things anymore, whoever gets the highest kill count at the end of the day wins!"-

She was interrupted from her slightly asinine though by the elevator door opening, revealing the Headmaster just standing there. He was wearing a pair of dark green pajamas and holding a mug of coffee in each hand.

"Coffee?" he said, offering one of the mugs to her. "I made it with cream, sugar, and vanilla."

"Uh, thanks…," she said, reflexively accepting the cup. "So...how did you…?"

"There's a camera on the inside, above the doors." He said this nonchalantly, before taking a sip from his own mug. "A holdover from the previous headmaster, but it helps me know what to expect when someone comes to call."

 _Huh, so that must be why nothing ever seemed to phase him…_

One question down, her eyes traveled downward. "...and the bunny slippers?"

"They're comfortable," he shrugged. After taking another sip of the earthy liquid he made his way back to his desk. "I must confess," he said, taking a seat, "I was toying with the idea of coming to see you myself, but it seems you've just saved me the trip." He set his mug down and rested his elbows on the desk, crossing his fingers. "Now, what seems to be troubling you?"

"Well…." Crimson headed over and sat in the chair that rose from the floor. She wrestled with her thoughts from a moment. "...let's just say that I've recently been feeling like I've been ignoring my mission."

Ozpin raised a curious eyebrow.

"Not that I haven't been having fun with my younger self and everyone," she continued, "but at the end of the day I haven't stopped whatever messes up the future, or even come close to learning exactly what it is I need to prevent." She sighed, looking at the headmaster pleadingly, "You haven't figured out what that is by any chance, have you?"

"No," he smiled, "I'm afraid I haven't." He reached over and grabbed his Scroll, opening a few files before handing it to the future Roby Rose, "That doesn't mean I've been idle, though."

She took the device and looked over the files, a set of three dossiers, her eyes widening a moment later. She didn't recognize the stoic looking man or feral looking woman in the first two, but the third she recognized immediately; it was the man who was practically like a second father to her, the man who first taught her how to fight with a scythe in the first place.

"I figured you could use some help in your investigations," he explained, "Qrow and his team have been keeping an eye on the more unsavory goings on in the Four Kingdoms over the years. Hopefully, they should be able to help you find what you're looking for easier. I trust you don't mind this?"

"Absolutely not!" she cheered, "This is great! I _literally_ haven't seen Uncle Qrow in years! Oh my god, we have so much to catch up on!"

"Well, I'm glad you approve." He motioned for his Scroll back, the ecstatic Crimson tossing it at him absently as she reveled in the few good memories she had left. "They should be arriving in the city later today, if you'd like to greet them."

"Sure!" This was almost too good to be true! Honestly, she'd completely forgotten about Qrow, but considering how scarce he tended to make himself it didn't come as too much of a surprise; she hardly ever saw him when she was part of the Dead Fantasy, though as far as she could recall there had never been any news of him dying. And as ambiguous as that fact ultimately was, she'd always went with the "no news is good news" school of thought in regards to him.

And to finally get the chance to see him again after so long….

"You don't mind if I hang out with them for a while before I get started, do you?" she asked, looking imploringly at the Beacon Headmaster, her bottom lip quivering slightly and her eye glimmering with tears just waiting to burst forth.

The effect, though diminished, was still potent enough to cause Ozpin a small chuckle.

"Go right ahead," he allowed, "it will give me some time to sort through the information we have currently. Though if you wouldn't mind indulging me then I'd like to talk with you for a bit." He activated the terminal in his desk and, after typing in a few commands, turned back to Crimson." "We can get to the pleasantries later," he said, a red light blinking on the holographic screen, "but I like you to tell me every last detail you remember about how the future became the one you showed us. And I do mean _everything_ , even if something seems insignificant; we'll fill in all the holes when Qrow and the others get here."

Crimson nodded, sitting up a little straighter, her face dropping its earlier mirth.

"Then let's begin." He pushed a button on the keyboard, and the red light stopped blinking.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Everyone was still asleep when Jaune arrived back at JNPR's dorm room: Ren laying on his back with his hands folded over his chest, Pyrrha on her side with one hand under her pillow, the other holding the loose blankets close, and Nora half sprawled on the floor, her headphones sliding off her ears, holding a stuffed sloth toy, and drooling slightly.

" _Zzzzzzzzzz!"_

And snoring.

Satisfied his teammates were still in dreamland, he tiptoed through the door, closing it gently behind him so the lock barely clicked. He then grabbed his onesie and hurriedly stripped out of his combat gear, tossing it over the end of his bed as he zipped himself up. He quickly made sure that Crocea Mors was resting against his small nightstand and slid under the covers, settling in for a minute before finding a comfortable position. If he was lucky he could get some extra sleep in before-

" _T.O.P.! T.O.P.! BOOOOW to the Tower of Pimps!"_ suddenly blared through the room, utterly demolishing the early morning silence as it repeated on a ten second loop.

Or...maybe not.

"Zzzz- Training time!" the bubbly berserker declared, now spontaneously awake. She flipped backwards so that she was standing before leaping over her bed, doing a forward somersault in midair. Surprisingly, she managed to stick the landing.

"Was that frontflip entirely necessary?" Ren asked without opening his eyes as his partner swiped her Scroll from her nightstand and shut off the alarm. From her bed Pyrrha moaned as she was ripped from her REM cycle, sitting up and stretching her arms behind her.

"Absolutely!" Nora answered immediately, "It was for style!" She placed her sloth toy reverently on her pillow (which remained used from the previous night's sleep) and grabbed her combat outfit, heading for the dorm's meager shower, "Also, Shotgun the bathroom first!" She then disappeared behind the bathroom door, the lock clicking shut a second later.

"...whatever," the stoic gunslinger shrugged, also getting out of bed. He gathered his own toiletries (including his bottle of Samurai Shampoo) and waiting for his childhood friend to emerge. "Remind me again why she set her alarm for so early?"

"I believe she mentioned that she wished to get as much extra training as possible in before the Tournament," Pyrrha recalled, going through various stretches to help her body wake up. "Either that or she simply wanted to be first in line when signing out Team up."

" _Both_!" supplied Nora, sticking her head out of the bathroom door, water dripping from her hair.

"...oh."

"Multitasking!" she beamed, disappearing back into the dark recesses of the bathroom.

Pyrrha blinked for a moment before shaking herself back to her senses, "Anyway, both ideas have merit to them. I wonder which we should accomplish first?"

"Perhaps we should ask our Fearless Leader his opinion?" Ren suggested, jerking his thumb at Jaune, who was trying to block out the everything (in the hopes of getting a few more minutes rest) by holding his pillow over his head.

Walking over to his bed, Pyrrha began to gently nudge the blond Knight in his shoulder. "Wake up, Jaune," she prompted, "we should make the most of our day now that most of us are up."

"Mmmm," he groaned, "Ten more minutes…."

Pyrrha shook her head. On one hand she could understand Jaune's reluctance to be up and about so early, (Nora maybe setting her alarm a little _too_ early in her fervor), but something in the back of her mind nagged at her that things were off in some way. He'd also been sluggish in waking the past couple of days, more so than normal. (And that was without Nora's little stunt like today.)

She couldn't put her finger on _why_ she thought that, though; she was clearly missing the one bit of evidence she needed to get her answer.

However, before she could ponder what that piece could be, Nora came barreling out of the bathroom (fully clothed and her hair wrapped in a towel) and leaped into the air, spreading her arms wide as she began to descend on her team leader, shouting "WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD!" as she did.

This finally managed to get Jaune's ("AAAAAHHHHHHHH!") attention, the scraggly teen rolling onto the floor before Nora slammed onto his bed, causing the pillows to fly into the air briefly.

"What the hell, Nora?!" Jaune yelled, getting to his feet, "Who wakes someone up by _jumping_ on them? ...who's older than four years old!"

"You're awake now, right?" she said, ignoring the near staccato beat of her team leader's frenzied heart. "Besides, I used to do that all the time with Ren, and he never minded." She turned to her old friend and partner, "Right, Ren?"

 _Slam!_ went the bathroom door, her inquiry coming just a second too late as Ren disappeared from sight, the sound of running water starting up a moment later.

"Aw!..."

"...Anyway," Pyrrha said, trying the question a second time, "Do you think we should begin training for the tournament, or should we make sure our team is registered first?" She began gathering up her own outfit as she spoke, as well as the proper toiletries for when Ren was finished with his morning routine; as undoubtedly comfortable as her silk pajamas (red with gold hems, of course) were, they weren't exactly suitable attire for either task.

Her question was answered by the rather audible growl that emanated from Jaune's stomach.

"...Yeah, let's get breakfast first," he added, "After that I guess we can get registered."

"Of course!" Nora exclaimed, smacking her forehead, "Breakfast! Why didn't I think of that before?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _Well, that took longer than I wanted. Not because I had trouble with anything in the chapter itself, this time it was due to me being distracted by this and that._

 _I promise I'll do my best so that it doesn't happen again._

 _So let's talk about the Future for a minute, since I didn't say anything last chapter. Aside from the obvious Terminator influence, (and like just about everything else in this story), I've been trying to go completely my own way with everything, possibly with the obvious exception of certain tropes inherent in the setting. Though to my knowledge a chemical retrovirus that only targets Faunus is a first for the Robot Apocalypse genre, at least in the mainstream cultural zietgiest._

 _Also, you'll notice that up until this point there haven't been any mentions of the Faunus in the future, save for vague tidbits from Crimson that relate specifically to Blake. Well, this is why; [in cannon] as of the last thing Crimson remembers, the Faunus are either completely extinct or are super rare in Vale to the point where they're technically a functionally extinct species, especially since they're more of a liability than an asset anymore._

 _And regarding Crimson's flashbacks, I'm probably only going to do one more of them before the end of the story. However, while I'm loathe to spoil anything, let's just say that it's going to be the worst one yet, and will hopefully make the other two seem happy and bubbly in comparison if I do my job right. Tee hee hee._

 _On an unrelated note, I have mixed feelings about the recently confirmed Japanese dub for RWBY Vol 1; on one hand I'm interested to see how well the dubbing is, but on the other hand this is only going to cause all the fans who hold to the opinion that "RWBY R TEH ANIMEZ!" to keep doing the things I ranted about in my editorial two chapters ago. (I'll spare you all a repeat of that and just say RWBY is about as Anime as Nickolodeon's Avatar franchise; good, yes, and wears its influences on its sleeve, but not the same as Dragonball Z or Cowboy Bebop or Steins;Gate.) Anyone else have any personal thoughts on this development? Feel free mention it in your review. Just...be aware that other people's opinions may differ from your own, so please don't start a flame war or anything over the issue; at the end of the day RWBY is still awesome, and that's all that matters._

 _In closing, longer waits between chapters may become the norm from now on, but I'll still do my best to crank out as much as I can. Though as of this posting, I'm going to be shifting some focus over to a Fire Emblem: Awakening one shot idea that's been nagging me recently, so be sure to check that out when it's done!_

 _Until next time!_


	15. Old and new acquaintances

_A/N at the bottom._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Weiss sighed for the umpteenth time that morning and pushed the bran flakes towards her partner and team leader again.

"I don't wanna!" whined Ruby, huffily folding her arms and turning her nose up at the cereal that sat on the table before her. She may have been forced to eat all manner of unpleasant and yucky things while growing up on Patch, but now she was fifteen and living on her own, gosh darnit! She should be able to eat whatever she wanted without "The Man" (in this case being Weiss) telling her what to do!

"Has she always been like this?" Blake asked as Ruby continued to act ten years younger than she actually was, taking a bite of her own bowl of serviceable but uninteresting cereal.

Yang gave an absent shrug, chewing, "Pretty much; when she younger she absolutely _hated_ anything that wasn't sugary and sweet; sometimes we had to hold her down to her chair if we wanted her to eat _carrots_."

Blake regarded the petulant team leader, who was currently trying to lean away from the spoon Weiss was holding up for her.

"...somehow, I can believe it."

As half the team continued to eat their bran flakes (and the other half got into an argument about what bran even was) Crimson walked over to their table, looking more bright eyed and bushy tailed that any of the girls remembered seeing her before.

"S'up, losers!" she beamed, her right eye sparkling as she waved to the team, "Who's up for a little trip into town!"

"Maybe some other time," Weiss declined, Ruby continuing to evade the dreaded Spoon despite the heiress's best efforts, "After Ruby here finishes her healthy breakfast-"

"You'll never take me alive!" she shouted as she attempted to run away, only to have Yang snatch her by the cape before she got far. It took her about fifteen seconds of running in place to realize that she wasn't actually moving.

"-we're going to register for the tournament," Weiss continued, letting the spoon drop back into its bowl. Crimson chuckled.

"I'm sorry," she apologised, "What I _meant_ to say was 'S'up losers, we're taking a little trip into town!'" She then grabbed Weiss by the back of her bolero jacket and dragged the girl behind her as she headed towards the door. (" _Why is it always ME?!"_ )

"Older Me is _so cool_ …," Ruby sighed enviously.

"We'd better go after them," Yang suggested, pushing her own bowl aside, "I feel kinda bad if we just left her alone with Crimson." She paused. "Huh...that felt kinda weird to say."

"So does that mean I don't have to finish that abomination against breakfast foods?" Ruby asked eagerly, "Because seriously, I'd rather eat tree bark than that, that...or Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes! Why can't we ever have those anymore, huh?"

"Let's just go," Blake urged, "the sooner we see what Crimson wants the sooner we can register."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Are we there yet?" Weiss demanded for the umpteenth time, still being dragged behind Crimson, "And was it _really_ necessary to hold onto me on the airship ride over here?"

"Yep!" Crimson said, popping the P. "And no, we aren't 'there' yet. We should be 'there' soon, though."

"You never actually told us where we're going," Blake pointed out.

"Yeah!" Yang jogged to catch up with the older Ruby. "We kinda need to regis-"

"There's plenty of time for that!" Crimson said dismissively, "Ozpin said that the registration booth wouldn't close until 7:00, and we'll be back _loooong_ before then!"

"What did you and Professor Ozpin talk about?" Ruby wondered.

"Oh, you know," she shrugged, "we just shot the shit for a while, talked about future stuff, started planning my next move to keep Time from going FUBAR, and had some coffee. ...you wanna hear about it?"

"I'd rather hear about where you're dragging us- _me!_!" Weiss demanded.

The rest of the girls nodded in agreement.

"Yeah...I'm not gonna get out of this one, am I?"

They shook their heads "No" in unison. (Expect for Weiss, whose asynchronous head shaking was due to her facing the opposite way as everyone else.)

"Fine," Crimson relented, "there are some people coming into town I wanna say hi to." She gestured to Yang and Ruby, "You two are probably gonna like these guys, one in particular."

While Ruby once again had a small flock of question marks circling her head, Yang merely raised an incredulous eyebrow. Despite Crimson being a good deal older than Ruby they were technically the same person, and Yang was pretty good at reading her sister if she did say so herself! Crimson wasn't telling them the whole story, big surprise, but given her apparent history it would take more than a menacing glare to get her to cough up her secrets.

"Mind filling us in on why you want to meet them so bad?" she asked.

"They're people who Ozpin thinks might help me find out what fucks up the future." She turned back to smile at Yang, "And hopefully with their help I can wrap that up quick so I can get back to spending quality time with all of you!"

"And teaching," Blake reminded her, "You're a teacher now."

"Yeah yeah, that too," she said, waving dismissively over her shoulder. "Anyway, we're gonna say hi to them real quick, then you can run off and get registered." She looked around, "I think it's right around the next corner where I'm supposed to meet-"

She was cut off when a trio of people, two men and a woman, rounded said corner directly in front of her. The woman and one of the men were wearing light cloaks and the other man wore an ebony duster, with a massive sword strapped to his back. The woman had a feral look in her eyes, like she would rip someone's throat out at the slightest provocation. She and the man with the sword had dark hair, (with the woman having the slightly darker shade), while the cloaked man had grey hair, styled in a spiky manner.

For a moment neither group said anything.

"Will someone _please_ tell me what's going on?" Weiss demanded, "Or better yet, _just put me down!_ "

Crimson let the heiress fall to the ground ("Oof!"), continuing to keep her eye on the newcomers. She knew who they were, but for some reason they set off every single danger sense she'd developed over the years.

"Qrow Branwen," she said evenly, "I gotta say, you're a lot uglier in person than I thought you'd be."

"Well, I aim to disappoint," he responded easily, shrugging. He turned a nodded in the direction of the girls, "What's up Yangmeister? Rosebud? Haven't seen you two in forever!"

"Hey Uncle Qrow," Ruby waved, peeking out from behind her older counterpart, "long time no see."

"What's up, Unc?" Yang was a bit more adventurous than her sister, standing out in full view of her uncle and the newcomers. She gestured between the two strangers, "You wanna introduce us to your friends here?"

"Oh, no problem!" He jerked his thumb behind him, "So the big guy is Cruz, and the lady's Sheena." He leaned in towards his nieces, "Don't let her near the liquor cabinet, she'll drink ya out of house and home!"

The woman slapped Qrow upside the head, "I'm right here, you asshat!"

"And your point is…?"

She hit him again.

"...morons," the large man sighed. "I'm heading up to Beacon, come find me when you're done bickering."

" _These_ people are going to preserve the future?" Weiss wondered. She preceded to let her head fall into her hands, "We're doomed…."

"Well...maybe they're just really really casual?" Ruby suggested weakly as her uncle was put into a headlock by his lady friend. "Maybe…?"

"At least he's sober this time," Yang commented, wincing as Sheena wrestled Qrow to the ground, "I guess that's a plus."

Blake said nothing, her gaze firmly fixed on the woman holding Qrow on the ground. There was something about her that she couldn't put her finger on, something that sent her Faunus instincts going wild. Like she was suddenly five years old and living on the streets, hiding from the Human Supremacy radicals.

She could immediately tell the woman was dangerous, despite how playful she was acting at the moment.

Crimson leaned in to Blake and whispered "Don't worry, she a good person; Ozpin told me all about her."

"What'd you say?" Qrow called from the ground, "I heard you mention Ozzy-boy's name- OW! That hurt, Sheena! Let me up already!"

"Will you buy everyone the first round if I do?" she asked, pouting in a way similar to what Ruby often did.

"Grrr!" Qrow growled, " _Fine_ , first round's on me. Now let me up!" The dark haired woman made a show of considering this, then released her grip on the poor Huntsman. "Thanks. And just for the record, I'm _only_ buying the first round; anything else comes out of your own pockets, got it?"

"Yeah yeah," she waved dismissively.

"So…," Ruby ventured, now that the mood was lighter, "what've you been up too?"

Qrow grunted as he picked himself up. "Oh, you know," he said, "going here and there, helping make the Kingdoms a little safer." He cracked his neck, "We just got back from Vacuo after dealing with a tiny Deathstalker problem they had."

"It was _sorta_ fun," Sheena added, "I mean, I definitely worked up a good sweat taking four of the bastards down, but didn't last long enough…"

"You guys took down _four_ Deathstalkers?" Ruby marveled.

Sheena shook her head, "Nope, _six_ ; Qrow and Cruz both took on one apiece, and I did the rest."

" _Whoa…!_ "

"I'm sure that's riveting and all," Weiss interjected, snapping her leader out of her trance, "but we actually need to go so we can get registered for the Vytal Festival tournament."

"Um, yeah!" As she headed off after her assigned partner, Ruby turned back and said "It was nice meeting you, Miss Sheena! You too, Uncle Qrow! See you later!"

"You two might as well go after them," Crimson said to Blake and Yang, "I'll catch up with you guys later; Uncle Qrow and I have some catching up to do."

"Alright," Yang shrugged, "if you say so." She tapped Blake on the shoulder, "Come on, let's get this done!"

"OK," Blake nodded, she and Yang running after their friends.

With the girls off getting set for the tournament, Crimson turned her attention back to Qrow and Sheena. "So Unc, you know any good bars around here?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"What do you mean 'we're too late'?!" Weiss demanded as the team stood in front of the registration booth, "It's barely even _noon_ yet!"

"I'm well aware of that," the attendant said, "but that doesn't change the fact that the four of you are too late to register for the Teams bracket; all available slots are currently filled."

"B-b-b-but how's that possible?"

The attendant sighed, "Because all the teams who registered did so long before now. In fact the last Team to register just left a few minutes before you got here, so if you have a problem you're more than welcome to take it up with them. Or, since you're already here, you can each register in the Singles bracket. Your choice."

"Team huddle!" Ruby declared, she and the others huddling up a short ways away from the booth. "So I guess we're fighting in the Singles tournament."

"This sucks! I was really looking forward kicking ass as a team with you guys!"

"Well, that's off the table now, Xiao-Long," Weiss pointed out, "unless you'd like to convince that last Team to drop out?"

"..."

"We're not convincing the last Team to drop out."

"Let me dream!"

"It's...not so bad," Blake said, trying to find the silver lining, "we're still good fighters in our own right, so we should be able to at least get pretty far."

"I kinda wanted us to win as a team too..." Ruby pouted, "we worked on our new combo attack and everything!"

"Is all our training just gonna go down the drain now?"

"Not if we win! We'll enter the the Singles bracket, we'll meet all challengers, and we'll _break all their legs!_ "

"Going a little 'Nora' there, Ruby," Weiss intoned dryly.

"Ruby's descent into a Nora-like insanity aside-"

" _Yang!_ "

"-who here wants to fight Singles?"

Ruby sighed, "I guess I will…"

"Weiss?"

"I fully plan on making Ruby's future self gasp in awe when I flawlessly win, so yes, I'm still going to participate."

"Good answer! Et tu, Blake?"

"If you guys are in, so am I."

"Sweet!"

"Then let's tell the offical our decision," Weiss said. determination in her voice. The girls broke their huddle and walked back to the desk, each looking confident. (Save for Ruby, who was still looking despondent at not being able to fight as a team.)

"Have to reached a decision?" the attendant asked.

"Put us down for the Singles bracket," Yang declared, slamming her hand down on the table, "We're all ready to bring the _Yang_!"

Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and the attendant all groaned.

"Seriously?!" Weiss shouted, "That's the worst pun yet! I'm actually disappointed that Crimson isn't here, because then she'd properly punish you for that crime against language."

Yang huffed, "You're just just jealous that _I_ thought of it first!"

"No," Blake intoned, "we're really not."

While her teammates bickered over the art of wordplay, a question popped into Ruby's head. "I wonder who the Team before us was?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"*hic!* ...so den whah happin'd?" Sheena asked after she'd downed her twelfth shot of hard liquor. She and Crimson had bonded almost immediately, due to both woman having a love of alcohol, and had been regaling each other with stories of their various battles, trying to one up the other.

Crimson ultimately won.

"OK," she said, preparing to tell the next part of her story. She propped her elbow onto the bar, "so, I'm thinking ' _the fuck is this thing supposed to be?_ '; I've already been in this godforsaken building for two hours at this and I've already searched the whole damn place from top to bottom, with the help of my squad mind you. I mean, you'd think with _four_ of us that we'd find _some_ sign of it!"

Sheena nodded sagely, knocking back another shot. "Me," she slurred, "I woulda juz _burned_ the plaze to the ground at dat point.

"She's not kidding about that either," Qrow added. He'd been nursing his own drink, a tall stein of bourbon, while the woman "bonded", trying to come to terms Crimson's actual identity; his little Rosebud, all grown up and fighting a losing war against legions of soulless machines bend on total annihilation of human life? And apparently sent back from the future to find what caused it in the first place and stop it all from happening?

Fuck him, no amount of booze could help him comprehend this!

That didn't mean he wasn't going to try, though…

Sighing, he took another sip from his stein, letting the dark, amber liquid roll down his throat, burning slightly. Having now met the older version of his niece in person, and hearing an abridged version of her life story, he was starting to get a clearer picture of what ozpin was planning. Granted, there were apparently some holes he couldn't fill just yet, but that should become a non-issue once he and his team sat down for Ozzy's little powwow.

Speaking of which, he should probably see what Darren was up to. He glanced over at the girls, (who were both drunkenly laughing at something one of them said, if he would hazard a guess), and pulled out his Scroll from under his cloak.

"Come on…," he groaned after about twenty seconds of ringing, "I know you always keep your Scroll on you…!"

"...at which point I just said 'fuck it' and headed outside to find some poor Grimm so I could let off steam."

"So then what'd you- *hic!* ...then what'd you do?"

"I decided to look in the adjacent building, figured there wasn't anything to lose, so I left my squad to their own devices and…"

" _What is it Qrow?"_ Darren asked after finally answering his Scroll, " _You and Sheena were supposed to be here two hours ago. ...are you drinking again?"_

"Not gonna lie, I'm nursing a _really_ tasty pint right now...but it was Sheena and Crimson's idea to come here."

" _...I don't know where 'here' is, but I'm waiting with Ozpin in his office. I want to start doing whatever it is he called us here for."_

" _Fine_ , I'll see what I can do about moving things along over here." He hung up and turned to his female companions, clearing his throat. "Uh, ladies?"

"Fvuk ovff, _Qrow_!" the feral woman spat, spilling some of her drink as she slammed her glass on the bar. She pointed at Crimson, " _She'z_ tellin me a good shtory!"

"She can talk and walk at the same time," he reasoned, "Darren's starting to get to a bit restless waiting for us, so we're head over to Beacon now." He tossed a Lien card to the bartender and slid off his stool.

"Wha'ver…." She tried to mimic her teammate's exit (sans tossing the Lien), only to tumble unceremoniously to the floor. " _Huh,"_ she murmured, " _who pvut dis vwall 'ere?"_

"Rosebud?" Qrow turned to Crimson, "Gimme a hand here?"

"Sure," she said, reaching down and tossing the alcoholic Faunus effortlessly over her shoulder, "but call me Crimson; the more I think about it, the more I realized I stopped being 'Ruby' a long time ago."

He wasn't sure if it was the booze talking or not, but he was fairly certain that he shouldn't be as shocked as he was at Ru- _Crimson's_ strength. Granted, Cruz was the only other person Qrow knew who was normally that strong, but…

Maaaaybe he should have gotten something so strong.

It took him a moment to gather his thoughts together, but once he did he gestured for Crimson to lead the way.

"So," he asked as they made for the airship pads, "you really don't know if I live or die in the future?"

Crimson shrugged, "I never heard anything one way or the other; nothing ever came through the regular news channels, and between always scavenging for supplies and killing the robots that happened to be attacking us that hour I never had time to track you down myself."

"Yeah, I guess that's fair."

"No," she shook her head, "that was just life."

There was an awkward silence.

"...so I noticed you barely touched your drink," Crimson said, hesitantly breaching the silence.

"Yeah, you can thank the walking winesack you're carrying for that," he said, jerking his thumb at Sheena. "Since I met her she sort of completely emasculated with how much booze she could pack away."

"*hic!*," Sheena contributed.

He continued, "It got to the point that I had to chain my flask to my belt so I wouldn't have to worry about her swiping it." He reached under his cloak and pulled out a silver flask with a thin but sturdy looking chain running from it back under. "Long story short, I learned how to make the most of a little."

Crimson nodded silently. She knew exactly what her uncle was talking about, though keeping one's booze safe wasn't nearly as essential as trying to spread the meager rations amongst roughly a few hundred people, which included children.

"Yeah," she said eventually, "I know what you mean."

" _Nobo'y gedz in dat way ovf my booze!_ "

"Um, she's gonna sober up soon, right?"

Qrow shrugged, "Maybe? It's hard to tell with her."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

In Ozpin's office Darren Cruz sat opposite the headmaster, calmly sipping from a mug of coffee. "...this is good," he said.

"I get it imported from a man in Vacuo who owns a plantation," Ozpin explained, sipping his own cup, "Nice fellow." He looked over the time on his Scroll, "I wonder what's keeping Qrow, Crimson and Sheena?"

"They're drinking," Cruz stated matter of factly, "Sheena won't leave willingly."

At that moment the doors were kicked open by Crimson, who was carrying Sheen on her shoulder, followed by Qrow, who'd ditched his desert cloak and was in his normal outfit: grey formal shirt, black dress pants, black dress shoes, and a short, tattered cloak, its red color faded.

"We're here!" Crimson announced, tossing Sheena at Cruz.

"Took you long enough," Cruz griped, effortlessly catching his thrown comrade. "How'd you get her away from her booze?"

"Pretty easily, actually," Crimson said, "especially when she challenged the floor to a fight and it kicked her ass."

"*hic!*," Sheena retorted.

Qrow noded, "Sounds about right." He walked over to Ozpin and shook his hand, "Long time, no see, you old bastard!"

"Glad to see you again," Ozpin reciprocated. "Your nieces have been doing quite well since coming here."

"Of course they are; Yang was always a great fighter like her dad, and I _personally_ taught little Rosebud everything she knows!" He glanced over at Crimson, who was kicking back behind Ozpin's desk, her feet propped up on the wooden surface. She had her flask out, holding it above her mouth and letting its contents fall down her throat. "Apparently, I taught her a little too well."

"You give yourself too much credit, Unc." Having emptied the flask, she returned it to its spot on her belt, "I got this little habit all on my own."

"Not sure if that better or worse…"

"Miss Thorne, I'd appreciate it if you got out of my chair."

Crimson looked over at the Beacon headmaster. "Aw come on, can't you let a girl have a cheap thrill? I've always wanted to do this ever since I started here! And besides, you're not using it at the moment-"

WHACK! Ozpin slammed his cane down on his desk, missing Crimson's legs only because her long honed reflexes were still in top form.

"I won't ask again, Miss Thorne," he said, his calm tone belying the absolute dread that now seemed to radiate from him, "kindly move out of my chair."

Crimson nodded mutely, complying with the _very heavy suggestion_. She'd seen and stood up to some serious shit in her life, but even the vibes she got when she met Qrow's gang paled in comparison to the pure, unadulterated, _primal_ fright she felt just now.

"Thank you," he said, sitting down. "Now, if you don't mind, let's get this meeting started. Mr. Cruz?"

"She'll be fine," Darren said, handing Sheena another cup of coffee as she finished the first he'd given her in an effort to help sober her up, "Continue."

"Very well then. Miss Throne, go ahead and explain what we're doing."

"Er...right…." Crimson cleared her throat, doing her best to bury the previous episode in a place where it would never bother her ever again. "So," she began, "as most of you know, I'm from the future."

Cruz raised his eyebrow but didn't comment.

"To make a long story short, we got royally fucked, and I got sent back to try and keep that from happening."

"Holly shit...," Sheena gasped, seeming a bit more lucid and she was before, "I just thought you were bullshitting back at the Crow Bar!"

Qrow patted the shocked Faunus on the shoulder, "No, she was completely serious about that." _And she practically drank Sheena under the table, something I never thought I'd get to see…_

"...huh."

"How did you travel to the Past?" Cruz asked.

"Something involving a teleporter, and this insane mad scientist, and a bunch of stuff I couldn't follow," she sighed, "But anyway, Ozpin pointed out to me that I'd have a better chance of accomplishing my mission if I had some help, hence why you three are here."

"Qrow Branwen is an old acquaintance of mine, and is currently helping me with a task that I believe intersects with Crimson's," Ozpin explained, interjecting into the conversation. He turned to the other two adults, "I trust he's explained that to you at some point?"

Qrow sighed tiredly, messaging the bridge of his nose. He remembered that day all too well, especially Sheena's reaction when he finally came clean with his two partners.

Some of those bruises still ached from time to time.

"Hmm," he hummed, "I'll take that as a yes." He turned back to Crimson, "Your uncle has been working with me for years to track down and put away criminals and persons of ill repute who pose a threat to the good people of Remnant; if anyone knows who could cause the future you've described to happen, it's him."

"Alrighty then! Lay it on me, Unc; who's suspect _numero uno_?"

Qrow sighed again, pulling out his Scroll. He flipped through it for a moment before opening up a file and tossing it to Crimson, who caught it easily. On the screen was a blurry photo of woman wearing a red dress, standing in the middle of a raging inferno. If one squinted it appeared as though she was holding a plume of flame in her hand, but the image quality was so bad that it was impossible to tell for sure.

"I've been tracking her for years," Qrow explained, "but unfortunately she always manages to slip away before I can accomplish anything, and I've never been able to conclusively link her to any crime she commits."

Sheena leaned over Crimson's shoulder, "That the bitch we need to find?"

"Reports say that she's intelligent, devious, charismatic, and manipulative as hell; if there's anyone I know who could plan and carry something that big, you'd do worse than betting on her."

"Does she have a name?" Cruz asked his leader.

"Yeah," he said, "but I've never been able to learn that either; if it weren't Sheena, I'd have drunk myself into an early grave out of shame."

Sheena classily flipped Qrow the bird.

Crimson continued to stare at the image, something about it nagging at the back of her mind. For some reason she felt like she recognized the woman, but couldn't place it for the life of her. It was also bringing to mind long repressed feelings that she thought she'd locked away for good.

She didn't like that.

"Well," she said, "priority one is finding out where this woman is now. Priority two is beating her to a pulp once we take care of priority one." She turned to address the small gathering, "Any objections?"

"Fine by me," Sheena purred, "I just hope she puts up a fight when we find her."

"Same," Cruz nodded.

"Sounds fine to me," Qrow shrugged, "The sooner this is wrapped up, the sooner I can watch my nieces win the tournament."

"They'd better," Crimson added, "after all the hard work I put into training them I'm gonna be _really_ disappointed if they don't at least make it to the semi-finals."

"It seems you're all in agreement," Ozpin noted. "In that case, I'll leave this matter in all of your capable hands." His piece said, he got out of his chair and headed for the elevator, nodding as he passed the group.

"So what's our first move, oh fearless leader?" Qrow asked once they were alone.

Crimson smirked evilly, "I was actually thinking about going clubbing."

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 _So, to borrow a line from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", I'm not dead yet! Seriously, I'm so sorry for taking so long put the next chapter out! Needless to say, that bad habit of mine where I get easily sidetracked reared its ugly head again, and it won't be the last time it will happen either! (More on that in a minute.)_

 _Anyway, VOLUME THREE IS OUT NOW! WOOOOOOO! It had a solid beginning, even if it wasn't nearly as memorable as the beginning of Volume 2. (And let's be honest, there was_ NO WAY _Rooster Teeth was ever going to top the Food Fight to end all Food Fights, as well as the best RvB reference in the series so far!) Episode 2 was a good follow up, and we actually got to see the rest of Team SSSN in action! Plus Vic Mignona sounding like he's trying to do a Steve Blum impression, which I can't remember him doing in any other anime I've seen that he's voiced. It's kind of refreshing, actually._

 _And now for some notes I've taken on points of interest in the first two episodes:_

 _Firstly, Nora's Semblance is officially revealed (It's lighting based.) and I should have seen it coming it was so blindingly obvious! Granted, no one else's Semblances have been direct references to the historical and fictional characters they were inspired by, so I think you can cut me a little slack for not immediately guessing it. Speaking of Team JNPR, "Arkos" is officially part of the show's cannon as a name for Jaune and Pyrrha's combo attack (which they never actually did). Incidentally, "Flower Power" is Nora and Ren's (again, yet to be performed). Also, I fully approve of Neath Oum taking over the voice of Lie Ren in lieu of Monty._

 _Also, Nora is pretty much all Team JNPR needs to win the anything._

 _Anywho, who out there enjoyed Team SSSN's fight? It wasn't as action packed as RWBY's from Episode 1, or JNPR's directly previous, but there were still some good moments in it, such as Neptune ironically being afraid of water. I think my personal favorite moment was when Scarlet (voiced by Gavin Free) got hit in the groin with flaming coconuts. (Go check out Achievement HUNT #35 Michael vs. Gavin to see why, it's not that hard to deduce.)_

 _And finally, the biggest thing from the first two episode that has been confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt is!...Blake really likes tuna._ Really _likes tuna._ A LOT _. It is balls hilarious._

 _Some things that_ weren't _touched on were Yang's connection to Raven, Velvet's weapon and Semblance, Cinder's master plan, the fate of Team CRDL (haven't been seen since Volume 1), the name of Cinder's Team (and by extension Neo's alias), and many other questions left hanging from the end of Volume 2._

 _And with that out of the way, let's talk about the actual chapter I just wrote, huh?_

 _I guess the first thing to talk about would Qrow's partners, Sheena and Darren Cruz. Like I mentioned a few chapters ago, they're very loosely based off of OCs of mine from other stories. The only major changes made to Darren are the fact that he's not as talkative as other versions are and (obviously) his weapon. Sheena on the other hand is radically different from my "Yoshi Takimora" character; she's an alcoholic, hot tempered Faunus who doesn't afraid of anything. Her Lightning power are the result of the conversation Ozpin, Glynda and Ironwood has in Volume 2, Episode 7, where it was mentioned that Dust could be infused inti clothes or even people's bodies. Hence, someone wields Lightning instead of a traditional transforming, multi-functional weapon. It's been fun to play with her character, especially after she's imbibed. And I don't know what it is about writing "drunk speak" that's just so satisfying to do, though maybe the fact that I haven't really had a chance to do so since "Cold Fuzz" and "Black Lagoon: Off Its Nuts" might have something to do with it..._

 _Regarding the tournament, it's pretty obvious that I wrote all this before Volume 3 came out; the having two separate brackets thing was more of a plot device than anything else. And yes, I will be showing some of the fights, especially on the RWBY side of things. (There might be character development there...) After all, Crimson didn't train them for nothing, right?_

 _And just to reassure everyone, more of Crimson's issues will be rearing themselves in the near future. In fact, some might have even begun to show themselves now even..._

 _As I've mentioned before, updates for this story won't be that frequent, due to most chapters averaging 5000 words each, and the fact that I've started writing another story that I'm having a surprising amount of fun with. That one will probably get the majority of my attention, so Sins is going on the back burner for now. Plus I have a oneshot that I need to finish, and_ another _story I want to get to that's sort of based on my completed story "Dif'rent Faces", so yeah. Probably won't see another installment for Sins until next year._

 _In the mean time, I'm off to get the first chapter of that new story done, and then watch the newest episode of RWBY..._


End file.
